the best thing that ever happened to you?

hey all, what's the best thing that's ever happened to you? could be an achievement you worked for, something you received, something you won, a friend you made, anything.

the backstory for me is that my family was very poor when i was in high school, in fact i had to get a job during my 10th grade year that i kept all through high school and my parents had to borrow the money i made just to pay the family's bills and break even.

they told me early on that i'd be obviously be on my own as far as college tuition went, so i was always very motivated in high school. i always thought i could work hard enough to get some sort of scholarship or something vague like that, so i always strived to be the best in school.

i ended up graduating valedictorian and star student of my high school, but that's not the best thing that's ever happened to me, but those things helped. i applied for a scholarship the fall of my senior year, filled out the application, and went through two rounds of interviews.

first, the scholarship director calls me back to tell me that i'm a finalist (i will be getting some sort of scholarship).
then he calls me back to tell me that they're gonna award me one for 3/4 of my college expenses.
then he calls me back a third time to tell me that somebody turned down a full-ride offer, and that i'm getting bumped up.

this has made all the difference in my life for me over the past year or so, having 8 semesters of schooling paid for. but it's not just about the money, either. it's the relationships i've made with other kids who got the scholarship that i probably wouldn't have known otherwise. the opportunities this has opened up for me (helped me get my current job, for example). it even changed my entire outlook and personality because being around so many kids who i'd describe as "go-getters in life" has rubbed off on me. :)

anyway, anybody else have a story to share? :)

The best thing ever to happen to me, bar none, would be my grade 4 teacher, being the third school I went to that year from moving so often. I went from a not particularly bright kid, to being on the grade 8 math team, and after her i hadn't learned nearly anything in school until grade 10 or so. She was that good. I tried tracking her down a few years ago but she died when I was in grade 7 or so (I'd moved about 7 times since she was my teacher, my family likes to move) so I wrote her family a card telling them how much their mother meant to me.

Best thing that ever happened to me was probably smoking weed.

Meeting the love of my life at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.
I saw her on the first day but we were each with a group of friends. Then at the end of the last night, after all our friends had gone back to the hotel, I saw her again. I shared my bowl with her, and we've been together ever since.




There's more.
The next day...
We spent some time at a few coffeeshops, and we were talking and she said she had just come from Jamaica. I mentioned that one of the guys in my group goes to Jamaica a lot, and he has a friend there who is a taxi driver that takes him wherever he needs to go, and that his Jamaican friend had called before we left the States and said he knew some girls who were going to the Cup, and we should hook up with them, and she said STOP.
Is his name Dalton?
Yes.
And is your friend named Dan?
Yes.
She was one of the girls we had been looking for all week.

I never believed in soul mates until I met her.
Who says cannabis isn't magic?!!!