I wouldn't be here if..........

[Top-of-the-hill]

  If my mother had not met a charming but unreliable, and married, man on an Air Force station during WW2. They obviously kept in touch, as I was born somewhat later.
   I will have to think about any earlier chance meetings.

[Caw1]

I would not be here if.....

My father had not taken my mother to a social event in Cairo in WWII rather than his wife who had two children under 18 months old ..... my mother was my fathers wife’s best friend!

[Finley 1]

Seems like the world is full of 'happy accidents'  

xin

[Marmalady]

I would probably not be here if my mother's first love had not died during the war.
Although, as he was engaged to someone else when they met, I cannot be absolutely certain what would have happened at the end of the war if he had survived.

[DianaCanada]

My Lancashire grandparents had not emigrated to Canada with their children in 1926. My father joined the Canadian army when WWII broke out and met my Sussex mother while patrolling Beachy Head in 1941. It is unlikely they would have met otherwise. Apparently I told my mother when I was a kid that it was all because of Hitler that I was born!

[pharmaT]

THought of another one.  I would not be here if my Gran's best friend did not have a March birthday.  On the night Clydebank was hit hard my Mum and her family were all at my Gran's friends house for a birthday tea and were about to return home when the sirens sounded.  My gran decided it was too much to run home (just 2 streets away) and the sheltered under the friends stairs instead.  That night a stray bomber that still had a pay load jettisoned his bombs on the way home.  One scored a direct hit on the school, the other on the shelter.  The secondary shelter under the stairs (for use when main shelter full) was filled with giant shards of glass from all the windows being blown in so their odds weren't good whichever shelter they'd used.

[Jomot]

Ooh, I like this topic!

I wouldn't be here if it wasn’t for bigamy. 

My paternal great grandfather’s first wife committed bigamy, as did my maternal GG grandmother’s husband (not with each other, I hasten to add!). 

In both cases they ran off to America to start a new life and the spouses they left behind went on to have further children, who I descend from.

[emeltom]

I wouldn't be here if my maternal grandparents had gone through with their plans to emigrate to Canada in the 1930s. They would have taken my then young teenage mother with them, meaning she wouldn't had met and married my Dad. Fortunately something or someone made them change their minds, they stayed in England and the rest is my history.

Emeltom

[coombs]

I wouldn't be here if my grandfather had died from being shot while in the army.