BristolUK

Shard

Sorry to read that. Not an expert, but I believe treatment of leukemia has a high success ratio. Many years back, the son of a family friend had it, and with treatment he was able to overcome it.

Shard

Didn't know that. The more we hear of your history, the more ridiculous the moniker DBD becomes.

dbd33

Irony, innit? At the time the Guardian talkboard started, 1999 or thereabouts, I registered with my name then realized I should have a pseudonym. I was wondering what to use while arguing on the phone with the mother of my children. I was insisting that I would not pay for the opinion of a second aromatherapist (the first one having failed to cure the autism) when another daughter, who was at my feet, wagged a finger at me saying "you're such a deadbeat dad". dbd @ hotmail was taken so I tried dbd01 and ended up at dbd33.

Gordon Barlow

Yes, most of us probably do have jobs that have been turning points in our lives. I've told (in #1 of this thread) how I got to Canada, but not what happened when we left. My Toronto employers (Touche Ross, the accountants) had over the Xmas period of 1966 sent some of us single auditors down to Grand Bahama Island to help out the local Touche office, and afterwards a week or two in Nassau itself, auditing one of the big trust-companies there. When it was time to leave, I applied for a job with that company, and went back to TO to marry Linda, who had flown back from Australia. I didn't get the job, so in my disappointment I lined up a transfer to the Jamaica office instead. On the drive down to Miami we decided to give ourselves two weeks in Nassau to find jobs there. We parked our gear in the Customs shed, told the boss-man our plan, and said we would phone him to forward the stuff to us in either Nassau or Kingston, whichever. (Imagine doing that today, in this security-mad world!)

In Nassau we knocked on doors, and purely as a courtesy I called in at the trust-company - to be told that the Irish chap who had got the job I'd applied for back in December hadn't turned up, and did I still want the job? Yes, please! Linda easily got a teachers' job, and we lived the life of Riley for the next 3 1/2 years. Tax-free. And working in tax-havens is all I've ever done since then. A turning-point indeed.

Johnboyuk

I doubt the Australians are more reserved than the Canadians. Maybe it means that they are out there in the fresh air enjoying themselves instead of spending time indoors glued to their PCs and social media and the like?

Gordon Barlow

Well, that's the image, John! Outside the main cities it's probably still valid.I haven't been back since '95, so I've largely lost touch. But I'd bet that there are always plenty of Aussies spending time indoors glued to their tinnies! (That's cans of beer, mate.)

Shard

So that's the etymology (irony understood, of course !). It's open-minded to engage even one aromatherapist for something like autism.

dbd33

That gateway, alternative medicine leading to a subscription to Health Freedom News leading to campaign materials for Lydon LaRouche presaged Qanon, anti-vaxxers, Trump and the Freedumb truckers. The right has a long history of batshittery.

Gordon Barlow

My wife's turning point was answering an advertisement on an Earl's Court notice-board for a travelling companion. She and Louise (the advertiser) made it down to Greece before the personality-clashes became dangerous enough for Linda to storm out of their hotel room at four a.m. and hitch a ride into Thessaloniki and the Youth Hostel there. I happened to be there too, and she bummed a ride in my Beetle next morning. Life with me - both then and later - was very different from what she was expecting. Three Norwegian grandchildren wasn't on her agenda, that's for sure. How the Norwegians got into the picture is another story. It all started when our son hitched a ride on a yacht going to Texas...

Gordon Barlow

Just to close out that theme - how we came to have three Norwegian grandchildren... Our son, then aged 24, hitched a ride with some Americans on a yacht sailing from here (Cayman) to Texas. He worked his way down to Mexico as far as Mexico City. While washing car engines there for a dollar a day, he lucked into a modelling + TV commercials job for $100 a day. [Or was it per hour? I forget. Per day seems a bit low, but per hour a bit high. I'll ask, next time he phones.] He turned his back on the money, and fell in with a band of Western hippies, one of whom was a young Norwegian and her year-old toddler. The band wandered down to South America, where the Norwegian girl got pregnant and insisted on going back home for the birth. [Norwegian women do that.] That was our second grandchild, and the third came along a few years afterwards, with a different mother. Luckily, they all speak excellent English now.

Among my family's land-holdings is a rough treehouse in the village of San Marcos La Laguna in Guatemala. If it's still there. He has the title, but, well, it's been 19 years now...

Gordon Barlow

Actually, the major, major turning point of my life was fathering a child. Initially I wasn't at all pleased with the addition, but after two or three years of holding-off, I fell helplessly in love with my little boy - and that changed my life. Not only did we decide to stay here in this Caribbean island, instead of moving on after our standard three-year stint as we had planned, but I became a house-father while my wife kept her job. I was the parent of first resort. I lasted six years at that, and never went back to full-time work outside the home. He and I were always (from that time) closer than he and his mother, owing to my Saint-Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus turning point.

I wonder how many others have seen the acceptance of a child as their turning points. A lot, I expect!

dbd33

Since the thread is back to life, I'm married to someone I met from this board. Prior to this arrangement I lived for years with someone from the Grauniad talkboard. Meeting the Gaurdinista was a turning point. I was driving back from Venture CA with a daughter. We'd had a good trip, driven on the beach in the waves in a convertible, tried surfing, fun stuff but we'd seen only each other for a week and a half. At the time I had the habit of meeting random people from the internet wherever I was so I pinged a lesbian poster in Colorado and the three of us went for a beer. I expected to hear about the tribulations of being gay in the west outside of the Republic of Boulder.

As the evening wore on, the lesbianism seemed negotiable so my daughter asked for the car keys and said she'd crash in the car leaving me the room. Her mother was subsequently quite scathing about that "am I to understand that you left your underage daughter in a bar with elk hunters while you went to have sex with a lesbian?" is not a question one should answer without counsel. Certainly a lively debate about the environmental impact of hunting was in progress when I, er, retired. Anyway, the upshot was that the bisexual came to live (I ultimately sponsored her as an immigrant partner despite my being married to someone else),

It all want well until her life changing fixation emerged. She was negotiable as a lesbian but non-negotiable as an equestrian. In due course we moved to the country. I've had an involvement with horses ever since.

Gordon Barlow

A fascinating story, dbd! I had to read it twice. The first time, I got confused trying to figure out the lesbian-to-horses transference, but I think I've got it now. Well, I hope I've got it now.

Anyway, your story covers a whole huge mass of turning-points, and is very much in the spirit of the thread! I'm sure our readers would be delighted to read of any others you can tell to a mixed audience! (Smile) (I have to add "smile" lest I be accused of being serious when I'm not. It has happened.)

I am I said

That caught my attention. Other than meeting random internet people to buy/sell a bicycle or a canoe or whatever, I have never really considered enhancing my social life this way. And then last year, I was giggling over something you posted and I thought 'next time I am in Toronto with some spare time, I am going to ping dbd and see if wants to go out for a beer'.