Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

“If it wasn’t for xxxxxxx I wouldn’t be here.” Weird things to Owe your existence to.

181 replies

OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow · 08/03/2020 20:31

Inspired by a conversation with dh today. We were driving past the site of the old tb hospital in our home town. His grand parents met there when gf was a patient and Dgm was a nurse. “So if it wasn’t for tb I wouldn’t be here.”
So is there anyone else who wouldn’t be around if not for something unusual?

OP posts:
Amiable · 14/03/2020 23:08

My mum’s birthday.

When she was 18 my mum had arranged a date and then stood the boy up. His best mate decided to get revenge by doing the same thing back... he then discovered he made the date for the night before her 19th birthday, felt guilty and went to the date.

The best mate was my dad - they were engaged 6 weeks later and married 6 months after that.

newrubylane · 15/03/2020 00:09

Glandular fever - the antibiotics she took for it made my mum's contraceptive pill fail!

TickyTacky · 15/03/2020 00:15

If my mum hadn't died when I was a child I wouldn't have had to move & change school, I met my now dh at secondary school. Met in y10, married at 22, 8 years married and 2 children now.

Wheezycheezeball · 15/03/2020 00:26

If my mother isn’t passed her professional exams I wouldn’t be here

RiverTamFan · 15/03/2020 08:24

WW2 & my grandfather's blue eyes

My Granny spotted him among all the soldiers from the training camp when she was working at the cinema in Carnoustie. Then she saw the Irish soldier with the blue eyes again at a dance and the rest is history!

My DF's friend's wife!

Suggested that, despite my DF having two left feet, that a good way for him to meet women would be to join a dance class. It was! Made more unlikely by the fact DF only knew his friend because they were both civil servants. Within a few years the friend decided his vocation was to be an ordained Minister and left!

Forfoxsake29 · 15/03/2020 08:42

I love reading these stories. Especially where the men have made the move. You wouldn’t hear stories like this anymore.

ShenanigansWake · 15/03/2020 12:23

OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow - my dad has the exact same story! He didn't find out until he started searching for his birth parents in later life. His dad had been a patient in a TB hospital, his mum was a young nurse. They DTD, she got pregnant, he died of TB. All my dad found out was this story and his dad's name.

MountDiogenes · 15/03/2020 12:28

I'm another who wouldnt be here were it not for TB. Grandmother's sister died of TB as a young mother. On her deathbed she asked her dh to promise to marry her sister to look after her so he did. He being my grandfather and the sister being my grandmother.

stellabelle · 15/03/2020 12:35

Mum and Dad always said that if wasn't for Hitler, we wouldn't have been born. Mum was in Canada, Dad in England, they'd been pen friends for years. When WW2 was declared, my shy father wrote a beautiful proposal letter to her. She packed her bags and caught the first ship leaving Halifax , arriving in Liverpool in October 1939. The banns took a month, and they married in November. A big rush ! All because of Hitler ! And it lasted 60 years .

MitziK · 15/03/2020 13:34

If my mother had any qualms about fucking somebody else's husband, I wouldn't be here. Had his wife not loved him so much that as soon as he realised what a fucking stupid idea it was to be with my mother, she accepted him back, their daughter wouldn't be here.

NinjaRule · 15/03/2020 13:40

If my grandad hadn’t have died, my nanna would never have met her second husband, who moved my nanna and her four kids (mum included) across the country, to the house next door to my dad.

TheGreatWave · 15/03/2020 18:18

If both my parents hadn't changed their holiday plans at the last minute, they wouldn't have ended up on their holiday together.

If they hadn't lost their first child in pregnancy, then I most probably wouldn't be here. My biggest sister is only here because my GM passed away and Mum 'comforted' Dad after having had no interest due to the stillbirth.

JoshLymanIsHotterThanSam · 15/03/2020 18:33

Not me but my kids.

They owe their existence to cocaine of all things 😂.

Had my husband not got so deeply addicted to the damned stuff his parents would never have moved 200 miles across the country to escape him, in turn when he hit rock bottom he left everything he knew and went to live with them to get clean....the place they moved to is where I lived-we met a few years later (he went cold turkey the day he left his home town and hasn’t touched it since) and the rest is history.

Tigernoodles81 · 16/03/2020 12:32

I love these!!

I wouldn't be here if there hadn't been 2 pregnant ladies with the same name at the doctors surgery. My mum was mistakenly given an iron shot (meant for the other lady) and I came early. which was just as well as I had the umbilical cord curled twice around my neck and knotted. If I hadn't have been delivered early, I would've died within days in the womb.

Elephantonascooter · 16/03/2020 12:40

If my mum hadn't had a car accident, I wouldn't be here and neither would my siblings. My dad was the police officer taking her statement.

If I then hadn't told my dad to stick his rules up his arse at 17 and not gone to the local, I wouldn't have met dh and DS wouldn't be here

Songofsixpence · 16/03/2020 12:47

My grandmother worked a night shift in a munitions factory during WW2. Her friend asked to swap shifts with her so my grandmother worked a day shift - that night the factory was bombed and pretty much everyone was killed.

If my grandfather’s first wife hadn’t been killed in an accident he would have never met my grandmother

And my children - DH and I went on a day trip to France in the car. On the way back to the ferry, I noticed a sign telling us to move lanes for Calais. DH didn’t see it so I pointed it out to him - he ignored me, just as I started to get a bit shirty a lorry came thundering past us on our side of the motorway. We would have been wiped out

Hoppinggreen · 16/03/2020 12:50

My DC were really really meant to happen. Fate kept shoving us together (almost)
DH is German but his Mum and Dad split up when he was 10 and while she got herself sorted he was sent to England to stay with his Auntie, who lived about 10 minutes from where I was but we didn’t meet.
My family then moved 2 hours away.His Mum decided to buy a post office - she had to decide between 2 .The one she didn’t choose was in the village where I had moved to.
When we were 17 we both went on school trips to somewhere very unusual that school trips generally didn’t go. We loosely followed the same itinerary/same hotels but he arrived the day we left
We met at Uni but were both in relationships with other people and were friends but not especially close
We lost touch but I ended up working not far from where his Mum lived. He finished his Masters and went to live with his Mum until he found a job. He heard through the grapevine where I was and as it was a hotel I was living there. One weekend he was bored and decided to call round the hotel to see if I was around - he arrived shortly after I broke up with my long term boyfriend
We’ve been together 25 years and married for 18. Took a while but we got there eventually

SilverySurfer · 16/03/2020 15:32

My DM had two miscarriages before me, I doubt I would be here had they both survived.

charley50 · 16/03/2020 17:25

@HerRoyalNotness -
'If I’d accepted a job offer in Australia instead of the Middle East none of my DC would exist. Just a pity I’m stuck with their dad now '
I have an almost parallel story. My mum accepted a job offer in Oz and was buying a suitcase in Paddington Station. My dad thought it was full and offered to carry it for her, then asked her out. She got pregnant, married him and never went to Australia. And she was stuck with my dad who was not a nice person at all. But hey, at least she got me and my siblings! Grin

HerRoyalNotness · 16/03/2020 17:46

@charley50 I hope she at least got to take a vacation there

Charley50 · 16/03/2020 18:54

No she didn't! But she was fairly well-travelled before my dad put her on 'lock-down' Grin

loosestrife · 18/03/2020 18:57

Gilbert and Sullivan! My grandparents met in a production of Iolanthe, I think. Or maybe it was Gondoliers.

peaceanddove · 18/03/2020 19:31

My Dad's parents only got together through a case of mistaken identity. My grandmother started chatting to my grandad at a local dance only because she mistook him for her friend's brother.

My Mum's parents only got together because my Grandmother's coat belt accidentally snagged my Grandpa's coat button as they walked past each other!

I only met DH because my friend had pulled in a club so I was playing the awkward gooseberry. Eventually I decided to leave and literally bumped into DH in the doorway of the club, the rest is history.

DD is only here because of a bottle of tequila and DH assuring me he would be very careful Hmm

zigzagbetty · 18/03/2020 19:33

A hotdog! My parents were on a date at the fun fair and my mum was sick after a dodgy hotdog resulting in a pill fail and me!

TheFaerieQueene · 18/03/2020 19:34

If my mother had a headache on her honeymoon I wouldn’t be here 🤣