What did you consider to be the worst experience of your life at the time but now you can look back and laugh about it?

Youngster

Youngster

Member
We've all been through bad experiences. Most of them seemed bad at the time but looking back at them you find they were nothing more than a good learning experience. Tell us about yours.
 

Moving back to the U S in 1972 with two of our 3 sons. No job, no home to go to, no car & two suit cases of clothing. A friend picked us up took us to where we could rent a trailer. Next day drove us to Reedman auto dealership in Langhorn Pa. In one day we had a place to live & transportation.

Looking back that was the worst experience that turned out to be the best experience. We left a good home & a good GS-6 job with the U S postal system. Knowing if we could succeed as a couple living out of the country, we could succeed where opportunity was possible for those with only a high school education. 23 years later retired early at age 54. The funny part is there is no way I see that kind of experience being possible now.
 
Car wreck. Many years ago (was 24 yr old). I was on a freeway and all lanes had come to a complete stop. A guy hit me going 80 + mph in a big Buick and I was in a small Corvair - his car, mine and the one in front of me were demolished (remember that Ralph Nadar special?). Nadar had hated the car because of the rear engine. In my case it saved my life, the engine was driven into the back of my front seat, but the floor shift top ball came off and the screw top went up into my leg to the bone close to the femoral artery.

Was off work for 6 months and the first night insisted on coming home from the hospital and didn't take any pain meds. Next morning - well you probably can imagine - I blanked out as I fell out of bed and crawled to the bathroom and the pain was off the charts.

We were pretty broke and I was hobbling around with a cane...hobbled up on a bus (it was Cleveland, Ohio )- found a job and now as I look back I do laugh at some of the funny things that happened during that recovery period. Believe it or not. Thanked God I was not killed and today usually walk 3 to 4 miles a day!



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I've thought about this. If I could go back in time. When I was 9ish, my mother called me to her bed to inform me "I'll be dead by morning." Fun fact: She was up in a few hours. She was a black hole of attention needing.

It was so bad, it's laughable now. If I could go back with my present brain, I'd say "no you won't be your manipulative b-word. You're going to live to 90. Get your effing ass out of that bed and stop this sh&)." It would have been fun to watch her head explode.
 
Well, my father passed away 10 days before my 16th birthday. No laughing there. I found my mother dead in her bedroom. No laughing there. I found my Aunt Evelyn dead in her room in the nursing home room where I work. No laughing there. I got a phone call on June 10, 2020, that my younger brother had a heart attack, and had passed away. No laughing there. My niece got breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy a few years ago. No laughing there.

If anything, I look back at those events with sadness, and feel like crying sometimes. Especially losing my little brother.
 
I don't know if I'm laughing about it, but I sure am grateful as hell now that it happened.

I was getting married at 18. I know, I know, bad idea but I was determined. The wedding is all ready, dress hanging on the door, church booked, invitations all addressed, stamped and sitting in a box for my dad to drop off at the post office the next morning on his way to work (in a fit of great fate, the printers had been on strike or something and the invitations came late or they would have already been in the mail).

The wedding is in three weeks and my fiance begs me to just skip the whole thing and run away that weekend to Kentucky to get married. I say, don't be silly, we're getting married in three weeks, why would we want to do that? We go around for a few hours arguing about it and he says he can't go through with it and can he have the rings back?

I am devastated and give him the rings back. He leaves. I cry for three days. He doesn't call. Total radio silence.

The weekend of our non-wedding, I go out of town and spend the weekend with my best friend, my maid of honor. Monday morning, she calls me and says that the best man (who worked with my now-non-fiance) had called her and was astounded that we had gotten married that weekend after all and why didn't he and she know about it? My friend told him that *I* had definitely NOT gotten married as I had been with her all weekend. Total astonishment. The best man said, well, "fiance" came into work Monday morning and announced, "Well, we got married this weekend" and everyone assumed it was me he was talking about.

Nope, he married someone else on what was supposed to be our wedding day. It was a shotgun wedding, of course. He had had a lapse of moral judgement and had cheated on me because, being the good Church girl that I was, I wasn't "putting out" as we called it in those days. The other girl had gotten in the family way and apparently he thought if he hustled me off to Kentucky and got married to me, the whole "problem" would go away.

Yes, at the time I thought it was the worst experience of my life. But it didn't take me long to realize I had dodged a bullet, a BIG bullet. I would have married a cheating man and a cheating man would probably cheat again. I was the winner in this situation. I heard later that his marriage wasn't a happy one and ended in divorce in a few years.
 
"What did you consider to be the worst experience of your life at the time but now you can look back and laugh about it?"

Pinky said:
hmmm .. nope. Nothing at all to laugh at, about my worst experience/s.
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NorthernLight said:
Nope. I've had a few detours that turned out to be serendipitous.

But the worst experiences are still the worst experiences. I don't think I "learned" anything from them either.
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Pepper said:
Reminds me of those who might think "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" NOPE, IMO. What doesn't kill you doesn't kill you.
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Murrmurr said:
In hindsight, it still looks really, really bad.
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There's nothing to laugh at about my worst experience(s). I thought for sure it would wipe me off the face of the earth, but here I am. What I learned is exactly what Pepper said," What doesn't kill you doesn't kill you."

Bella ✌️
 
I don't laugh about this even now but it changed my life. When I was singing in a rock band, which is what I thought I wanted to do until my good friend, also in the band, committed suicide in a most violent way possible. I quit the band, enrolled in college and got away from that scene and I do believe my life is better for it though I cannot look back and laugh as it was too serious.
 
chic said:
I don't laugh about this even now but it changed my life. When I was singing in a rock band, which is what I thought I wanted to do until my good friend, also in the band, committed suicide in a most violent way possible. I quit the band, enrolled in college and got away from that scene and I do believe my life is better for it though I cannot look back and laugh as it was too serious.
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Oh, what a terrible thing. I'm so sorry. I'm glad you did do what worked out for you though. At least it sounds like it did.
 
I would have said "Most Embarrassing" not "Worst Experience" I can't laugh at my little tabby dying, nor putting dogs down, nor Mom passing.... Sorry, wet blanket here.
 

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