Being medically disqualified for flight. I worked towards the goal of being a military aviator for over a decade, only to find out that my objective depth perception wasn’t good enough. I almost went blind on two occasions before then, was one of the first in the country to get a new kind of corrective surgery to get to perfect vision, and never had issues with depth perception (could accurately determine distance out to about 6 miles, +/- about 50 yards, verified on radar). All of that, only to find out that because of the first event that almost blinded me as a child, my brain didn’t develop objective depth perception the way it should have. The test where you’re given a page and told to pick which circle pops out looks the same to me.
I honestly don’t know if I would change anything that I did had I known sooner, because I did still get some positives from my time in the military (along with plenty of health issues), but it definitely would have given me pause.
When I was a kid, I was in band class. We were having an end of the year big concert and my parents were coming for once. I was first chair and had a fun part in one of our songs so I was really excited to get to play for them for once.
Because of my excitement and my being just a kid, I was bouncing around and the neck strap for my saxophone broke. I played tenor and there was no way my little hands could hold that thing up for a whole concert, so I was pretty much booted from the concert last minute. It broke my damn heart. Even thinking about it now makes me teary. All that hope just quashed because of some dumb mistake.
Good news is that the band director did me a solid and let me walk out with my case to rest my sax on beside my chair, but the damage had already been done.
- Being a school kid in class, all of us watching TV to see the first teacher go to space and seeing instead her death as the Space Shuttle challenger exploded.
- Being from Massachusetts, watching the Red Sox world series with my Grandfather in 1986 and seeing the ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs.
- Not making the high-school basketball team as a freshman because I was too short. When I graduated I was 6 feet 2 inches.
Watching my child cut themselves repeatedly for years because of undisclosed abuse from the man I was once married to.