I had the choice of going to one of two universities, UWE in Bristol or Portsmouth uni. No other university would accept me for the course I wanted. After visiting the campuses and hearing a bit more about the courses, I decided to go to UWE. A year on and a lot of things have happened in my life, I've become integrally involved with the drama society (we're going to take something I helped write for up to Edinburgh) I've met people who have changed my viewpoints on life, I've had an attempt at love and failed miserably... Twice... yet I'm still friends with those prior love interests, and I've even organized who I'm going to be living with for the next year. Parallel to this I've discovered an old school friend of mine has gone to Portsmouth and has started work on a sitcom. It's got me wondering, what if I went to Portsmouth instead? Would I be involved with this sitcom in any way? Would I actually have properly found love? Would I have found friends I liked and trusted enough to live with? Would it simply be a matter of trading the stage for the camera? Who knows what would have been different if Portsmouth had seemed slightly more appealing that one day I visited.

So very much with this troper. 3 years ago, my parents adopted a little boy from Guatemala who could speak English but could not read (well, he just turned 4). The board games he could play were limited, and we all got sick of them after a while. My dad then heard about the simplicity of the Wii and decided to pick one up. He also bought my first Mario game- Mario Party 8. I decided to look Mario up on Wikipedia because a) I had once seen an episode of The Super Mario Bros Super Show, but then I forgot it so i felt I had a duty to remember again and b) ''we had no idea what was going on.'' After that, I became addicted to Mario. I then joined a Nintendo Fan Club on a favorite forum of mine. After a while, someone linked to an article on the Super Mario Wiki. I joined, got hooked, joined the accompanying forum, got hooked on that, and dwelled on the forum. After a while, someone posted a topic called "Have you ever sent an email to Strong Bad and linked to Strong Bad's article on The Homestar Runner Wiki. I clicked the link and found (and became addicted to) Homestar Runner through the wiki. Makes me wonder what would have happened if my brother could read when he was adopted.

sabrinadiamond If MY mum arrived at the hospital on time and my CreepyTwin brother didn't come out months earlier, I could've ended up a normal girl- instead of having many DisabilitySuperpower... IJustWantToBeNormal (cries)...

Sorry to hear this.

It happened to a distant cousin of mine that is slightly older/younger than me (not sure, since I never asked to his parents, but the year is the same and I was born during the summer too). When he was a new born, their parents were on the litoral, the ambulance didn't arrive in time when he had a stroke, I guess. Now he has cerebral palsy, and can't speak, can't study, can't eat and go to the bathroom by himself.

My mom and dad only planned for us to live in our Seattle home for five years, and then move somewhere else, possibly out of state. Then in October 1986, just as the five years were up, Dad was diagnosed with leukemia, and passed away a couple months later. Had he survived, my history would have been very different.

Later, in 5th grade, I got a really bad teacher, who was later convicted of child molestation. I almost transferred to an alternative school, but then we decided to go back to my former 4th grade teacher.

My friend was only born cause her mom took a day off school, if she had gone to school, she would not have met her dad, and had my friend and her brother and sister.

A pretty sad one from This Troper...She was supposed to call her friend whom she haven't see months,but she lost the number.The only person she could think of who had it,was a guy she was in feud with so she gave up.Fast forward week later - said friend takes his own life.She wanted to ask him if he would like to move with her to the UK for work,and change the environment we lived in.Well,in the end she met his brother on his funeral and after few months of weird stuff happening went with him instead.And also it was a damn huge {{Character Development}} for her and other people (something like [[spoiler:Kamina]]'s death to his friends)

If I hadn't been a lazy bum who never finished her biology labs, thus me being unable to taking the regents and subsequently wandering around Manhattan in depression, I wouldn't have met the girl who would become my best friend. For further awesomeness, I am going to be the witness when she gets married and the godmother for her kids.

My mother probably could have gone to college if she wanted to, but choose not to and got a job instead because she wanted free time to hang out with her friends. If she had chosen to go to college, she wouldn't have gone through several secretarial jobs before winding up at a company on Wall Street where she met the man whom she would eventually marry. Therefore, if my mom had gone to college, I would not exist.

Same troper here, I just remembered another incident after my father died. My mom went to the movies alone one night, and when she came home, went to check her email and found an email from a cousin of hers whom she hadn't heard from in a long time. If my mom had ignored that email instead of answering, both our lives would have been drastically different.

Clueless, this troper was using his father's computer (he has no problem with that) and was listening to some music, specifically some of the band Scorpions. I didn't realize that my sister's Last.fm was still running there. Two days later, she asked me if it was me listening to Scorpions at said PC... the songs were suddenly on her list. The point was, ''the band suddenly got to first place of the week's most listened bands''.

Thanks to my sister getting a C in sixth grade, my parents freaked out big time and rather than doing the sensible thing like hiring a tutor, they decided to move to the hellhole we've been living in since 1996 just for their so-called blue-ribbon schools because they figured good schools = good grades. I had fantastic grades before we moved, after we moved they dropped like a rock, and that's just for starters on how messed up my life has been since I was ten. (In case anyone is wondering, my sister's grades did not improve after we moved. If that's not irony I don't know what is.) On my worst days I sometimes wonder had my sister not gotten that C whether or not I could've gone to achieve the two childhood dreams of mine - attending UCLA and studying to be a veterinarian.

This Troper's entire Internet Life (so to say) was entirely dependent on a single Image Search performed on Google on a whim because he was into Metroid Prime at the time. This allowed him to find his first forum proper, which led to deviantART, which lead to several other forums, friends and interests. All of THAT was reliant on his brothers deciding to get a Super Nintendo when he was 4, which led to this Troper becoming a huge Nintendo Nerd. Several times he wonders how things would've turned out as if he hadn't performed that fateful Image Search or his brothers had gotten a Sega console instead, or nothing at all.

This Tropette was twelve years old and into HarryPotter in a big way. Bored, I decided to do some googling on that, but the Dutch websites weren't any good, so I decided to check out some of the English ones. I found an amazing RPG-website in English, joined it despite not being entirely familiar with the language and spent a fair amount of time on there. I met my best friend Alice there, and she introduced me to fanfiction, which I took a liking to and started to write myself, deciding that I'll someday publish a book. Later, my HP-fanness started to fade, but I heard some of my friends on that website were setting up a Literature/{{Twilight}} RPG, which I joined as well. I met my other best friend Bob there. The three of us - Alice, Bob and me - are as close as anyone can be. We cheer each other up and share news with each other before we talk to anyone in real life. Bob and I actually talked each other out of suicide. However, if not for that one afternoon where I decided to google for English websites instead of Dutch ones, I never would have met my best friends, would never have gotten better at English, would never have gotten into writing, and possibly the most horrifying of all, might actually have gone through with suicide.

Let's set some background for this lovely story. My mom was a popular girl and had many past boyfriends--in fact, she never saw herself settling down... Much less marrying! However, there was one boy throughout her life she could almost see herself ending up with. This boy she dated on and off from eighth grade to right after college. And probably would've continued to do so if not for one fateful night...

Her and her boyfriend went to different colleges and were not averse to splitting up and dating others before getting back together. In fact, quite often after a break up they would simply return to each other and whichever one last had a relationship would drop that one to get back together. Then the cycle would repeat. On multiple 'off' times she dated another man we shall call Bob. Bob was on a rugby team and mom quickly befriended the players on the team, hanging out with them often.

Well, not too long after college there was a party and most of those team members were there. Mom had gone with her roommate but her roommate tired before her and had to leave early. Mom called the on/off boyfriend to come by the party, maybe pick her up, get back together--that kind of thing. He said he'd try. Mom waited and waited but he didn't show up--however, since she knew most of the people at the party, she knew she could get a ride. She wasn't mad he hadn't come--as he hadn't promised anything. This isn't the nail.

The nail is who mom rode home with. She rode home with one of the rugby players--one she considered a good friend but had never really thought of dating. After he dropped off a couple other of his friends, they drove to some remote place and talked (literally just talked, I asked) for hours--she says until six in the morning. And then he asked to kiss her and she obliged.

However, they couldn't get together because he didn't want to upset Steve who still liked my mom who mom was no longer dating. Mom was heartbroken--like she'd never been before, to her surprise--and, after a week passed, her and that friend DID get together. Shortly after, the on/off boyfriend called, hoping to get back together and, as you can guess, she said no.

The friend who took her home and who she ended up with--that's my dad. And she assumes that her on/off boyfriend had been trying to cut ties with another girlfriend before getting back together with her--and was just too late.

And, of course, if my mom and dad hadn't gone to that Tech game and watched them win... I wouldn't have been... conceived in the aftermath of celebration. *cough* And if I had never been conceived... Well. Let's see. I would've never met a dear friend of mine (who I shall call A) and if we had never become so close in preschool, neither of us would've joined Girl Scouts to stay together and become friends with B. And if I had never been friends with B, I would've never gone to the middle school I chose to go to and become friends with C. If I had never become friends with C, I would've never remained on a site I chose and become friends with D and E. All of these people, of course, I consider very precious and who consider each other very precious.

Oh. And then my Nana and Papa. They met because my Nana was friends with a girl my Papa's friend's friend had dated and they were invited to a party that my Papa went to and since Papa was one of the few with a good car, he ended up driving them around and began talking with my Nana... And. Well. You can figure out how that ended.

Two of my goals right now are to get a college degree and go into the CoastGuard as a commissioned officer. So far, college has taken me a while, with me taking three years off because of some rude professors at my college (I graduated high school in 2004, and I was ''supposed'' to graduate college in 2008). But through hindsight, I still wonder what would have happened if I'd gone to the Coast Guard Academy instead: I'd have my undergrad degree, I'd have my commission, I'd probably be stationed somewhere, I'd be (at least) a Lieutenant already, and I'd be using the GI Bill to pay for a Masters Degree. All plusses, right? And then, when I think about all of that, I think about all of the friends I met through my current college and hometown, and how there's practically no way I'd know any of them if I'd gone to the Coast Guard Academy. And ''then'', I wonder about all of the friends I would have made in the Academy and through the CG, and if I'd be married with kids yet, etc. You really end up living with the choices you make in life, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

My entire relationship with my girlfriend. If I hadn't logged onto some random chat site at the exact right moment, or I hadn't been trying to sing Still Alive with random strangers, or she hadn't joined in, or she hadn't managed to wrestle her MSN into adding me at the end of the conversation, or she'd been from a different country or too far away to meet up, or we hadn't decided to do so soon after, or her mum hadn't let her, or my parents hadn't been away (fairly sure they'd never let me meet anyone from the internet), we would never have fallen in love.