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It can be weird being a dad. I never understood the fanfare over high school graduation. It's probably the easiest thing a person can do relative to the rest of their life. It's just starting to screw you over.

Wasn't a big milestone for me - graduating myself or having my son graduate. Graduating college (attended nights while working 60 hours a week during the day) wasn't that big for me either.

Bigger was pinning PV2 on him at graduation (meritorious) at Ft. Lost in the Woods. I was unable to pin his castle on him later tho and that pisses me off.

Biggest yet - today left base the last time, honorably discharged veteran. Sitting at the airport, waiting for his girlfriend's flight to land so they can drive to my house together. - I admit, I'm a bit choked up thinking about it. Probably more choked up than when (I'm sure) he'll eventually get married.

His platoon passed the hat and got him a really nice going away plaque with a saying, his unit and unit mascot on it - he must have made quite the impression in the E4 mafia.

16 years ago - I was making the same change - leaving base, headed to my dad's house to start live in the .civ div.

What was the largest milestone event of your life?

Probably college graduation. Knowing that those carefree days were over and that I'd never see 90% of those friends again. It was true, I never did see them again. It was an incredible 4 years, most of the time I wish I could go back and relive it. Was special to me.

3.
Watching my children all graduate from college with honors and going on to successful lives making the right choices.

Now watching their children on the same path.

Wedding day, here. I faked that young lady out, and she still (somewhat) tolerates my BS!
I sometimes have to wonder if she really IS smarter than me!

Does the milestone have to be happy?

The biggest milestone of my life, bigger than hs grad/enlisting in the USN/Getting a degree/Going into combat for the first time/Making CPO/getting married/retiring from active duty all pale in comparison to losing my father. No more fishing and hunting with him. No more turning to him for advice. No more just sitting around shooting the bull with him. That had the biggest impact on me.

Like.

High school graduation was blah as far as I was concerned. College graduation was kind of the same except for them draping a gold tassel over my shoulders with the diploma in my hands. Walking out of the hangar with a DD-214 was a much more meaningful day for me. The day my wife and I were wed was much more surreal.

Having the Dr hand me a 6 and a half pound tiny baby boy and thinking to myself, “I made this”. Probably means more to me than many if not most since we knew going in that we would only get one.

Next and in a very different way was moving home after being away for 12 years. So many changes and so much had happened in my life during that time. It was like I grew up and left and then spent the next decade growing up all over again, only without the safety net of family nearby. When we moved back to my hometown surrounded by my family it was and is nice to be home and spend our lives with them and share our son with them as he grows up. But life seems much more mundane and the adventure isn’t there, likely never to return due to circumstances beyond any of our control.

Oh well, life goes speeding by whether we want it to or not so outside of ending it all you just ride the ride and try to steer it the way you wish it would go.

I was too scared the day he was born to appreciate it. He was a RCH over 4lbs and pretty early. Doc telling me "don't know if he'll make it, next 2 days are critical. Mom's not getting better either - we'll need to keep her here too. Don't go in there yet, still working on her" - took the bloom of that real fast for me at 22.

Parents dying and having grandkids.

Milestones are funny. I did about all I could with my MIL career and each milestone was a point of pride and achievement. None of it compares to the pride I felt when my daughter recently graduated from ECU with a nursing degree then knocked the licensing exam out of the park. Will be moving her into her own place next week so she can start her own adventure.

Being a Dad.

We lost a baby, had our second, and they didn’t know if she was gonna live either. She is 25 now and an RN. She has a rare, incurable disorder, and still has significant issues. The doctors are saying her life expectancy is only 48. I am very close with both of my daughters.

I have been through a lot of stuff, lost both parents suddenly and tragically, divorced, put myself through college, but being a Dad was my biggest life event. Without question.

I was drunk when I walked the stage in high school, lots of kids were in the 70’s, graduating wasn’t a big deal. GREAT years in college, but graduating wasn’t a big deal.

First milestone was returning to America after three years in the West African sticks (Peace Corps), profoundly disorienting. Second milestone was discovering motorcycles, didn’t hardly get off one for the next twelve years.

Marriage and becoming a stepdad was a whole new thing, but the biggest deal of all was becoming a grandpa 🙂

Teal, congrats on a fine son 😎

Leaving my college campus in 1985. There were good times with friends who still remain so but the curriculum was brutal for me.

The birth of my son was undoubtedly the biggest milestone in my life both in starting me down the path to feeling and acting like a mostly full fledged adult and the emotions that I felt holding him for that first time.

Smaller milestones that stood out

turning 16 and getting that all important driver’s license.

Turning 18 and not feeling any different but knowing that legally I was an adult.

Being born, baptized, drivers learners permit, drivers license, graduating high school, first real girlfriend, marriage, birth of children, loss of siblings, and parents,.

Hard to scale the biggest or best/worst

I could build a castle….with all the bricks they threw at me

-Taylor Swift

Milestones are relatively easy to achieve in my experience. It’s the damn mill-stones we carry that are a schit load of work to deal with day in and day out!!

I often refer to Taylor Swift to solve my life problems...either her or Brittany Spears. Two of the greatest minds in history.

On a serious note

I guess sitting in a bankruptcy attorney’s office and him reaching over his shoulder and giving me and the wife Dave Ramsey’s book in June 1997, tell us not to come back till we read it.

Then by Summer of 1999 paying off $70,000 credit card debt, 2 car notes and the house. Going down to The Registrar’s Office getting a copy of Release of Lien and framing it