The year was 1976. I was a Military Police Traffic Accident Investigator in Seoul, Korea. My job was very complex because I was required to know U.S. army and civilian laws along with Korean military and civilian laws. Depending on who was involved in the accident I was being sent to investigate I had a detachment of Korean civilian police or Korean military police (very tough guys) to grab an assistant from.
     On this particular morning I had an easy task. I had to drive out to Seoul University to get a statement from a Korean civilian. I took a Korean civilian policeman, Headless Hong, (he was a story unto himself) along with me.
    When we arrived Hong said he'd take care of getting the statement inside. No problem. It was a beautiful late Spring day so I would sit in the courtyard and take in the sights. And what a sight I saw.
     Sitting across the courtyard from me was the most beautiful Korean girl I had ever seen... a young college girl. One glance told me that she wasn't of the same type I was used to dating in Korea. She was obvioulsy from money. Classy, educated, young, heartbreakingly, impossibly beautiful, and she was looking right at me with a million megawatt smile on her face.
     "OMG, is this really happening?" There was no mistaking it. That big, gorgeous smile was just for me. I spoke Korean; not well but well enough to be understood. Did she speak any English? It didn't matter. Love is the universal language. We would find a way. She got up from her bench, still smiling from ear to ear and started walking toward me. "Somebody pinch me!" Then she stood in front on me, this vision of womanly perfection. She put a thumb and index finger to each hauntingly beautiful eye, made them perfectly round, and giggled "See you rater, Arrogator." Then she scampered off to get on with her life.

Had one just a couple months ago when I first braced my first bow and it did not break. I was so amazed, I immediately showed it to the SO before it did break. I won't forget that :-?

One I share with most Americans who aren’t too young...September 11, 2001. I was walking to my electronic circuits class at Texas Tech when the news of the Twin Towers came up on the TV. Three years later I was working with the same type of robots that were used to search for survivors in the rubble in New York... and even occasionally working alongside some of the people who were on site operating those bots.

One moment that was memorable for being heartbreaking I experienced at the old folks home I was working at for the summer a few years ago. This place is specialised for very advanced cases of dementia (for the most part) so almost all the residents (not patients because it's still considered a home not a hospital) are bed-bound, majority are non-verbal and all require round-the-clock care. One resident there, "Steve", had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Thing is, back in the old days, if you acted a bit weird they would slap on a diagnosis of schizophrenia and send you off to the nut house, so how accurate that diagnosis was... debatable. Steve did suffer hallucinations and never made eye contact, he spent most of his time in bed staring at the wall, but how much was dementia, how much was schizophrenia and how much was something else it was hard to say. Anyway.

One day I was helping to feed Steve. He had no awareness there was food in front of him until the spoon touched his lip, so he needed help for every meal. Part way through feeding him, Steve suddenly got this look of absolute amazement on his face. He was staring at the point the ceiling and wall meet on the other side of the room, absolutely enraptured. It was like he was looking at the most incredibly beautiful wondrous thing you could ever imagine. I've never seen such intense joy on someone's face before or since. Steve started to pull himself up from the bed, pulling on the bars on the side of the bed so he could sit up. He was still absolutely transfixed. He pulled himself up more and more, trying to get closer to this thing, and then he stopped. He couldn't go any further. He didn't have enough strength or movement. He started sinking back down into the bed and the look on his face changed. He could sill see that amazing vision but he couldn't reach it and the realisation he couldn't do it was crushing. He kept staring but with this different look of resignation. I went back to feeding him but I had to take a minute afterwards. One of the most intense situations I've been in.

Had a patient my daughters age, around 10-11 years old. She and her twin brother had been doing one of those stupid internet challenges, you know the kind that get people killed. One thing led to another and the bottle of alcohol had exploded all over her leading to second and third degree burns all of her body.

We were making our way down to Galveston to the Shriners Childrens Hospital for burn victims and she was moaning in agony. Thank God I was not the attending medic this time. I could hear my partner say "Its ok baby, you can scream if you need to..." And then came the most God awful sound I've ever heard a human being make. Pain mixed with emotional agony that no child should know. "Mommy im sorry Im sorry Mommy, it was my fault wheres my Mommy...." in between screams of agony. I am ashamed to say I had tears in my eyes that night. Medics are supposed to be clinically detached so we can deal with this stuff but I just didn't have it in me that night. Still brings tears to my eyes when I think of it. I have no idea if she survived.