What experience made you grow the fuck up?

I used to be a snobbish spoiled brat, until one day I got a dose of reality.

I'm just gonna cut to the chase here and tell the story of how I lost my father. This has been copy-pasted as I do not want to go through the emotional trauma

I was riding jet skis with my dad and my brother, we each had one rented. I'm riding alongside him, he wants to head to a place called ski alley. My dad wanted to take a right turn, so he signaled to me where we were going. I nodded, and we proceeded. As my dad takes the right turn, a boat going about twice our speed comes out of nowhere and hits him dead on. Huge splash, people fell out of the boat, and there was only a 14 year old kid left on the boat at this point. My dad is in the water. All ribs broken, he is involuntarily doing a backstroke, while making no noise when we call to him. The kid in the boat wants to bring it back, I guess. He puts the boat in reverse. My dad is about 10 feet behind the boat. We start screaming (my brother and I) for the kid to stop the boat. He does, but only a second too late. He ran over my dad completely. No, he did not die. Not yet. Still hate that kid to this day for his complete ignorance. Anyway, my dad resurfaces. He still has a blank expression on his face, just treading water. The water surrounding him turns red, and I want to know what happened. The kid ran over his leg. It was completely chopped off by the propeller, and my dad was brought on to a boat. We called 911, they told us to put pressure on the leg. Another bystander boat came by and brought my dad on to it. Once he was on there, we brought him to shore. The paramedics came to him and wanted me to come there to comfort him. I was about to throw up because of looking at his leg, it was cut off from the knee down. But nevertheless I walked over to where he was and was next to him. The paramedics told him, "Your son is here! Your son Mark is next to you!" And at that moment, even though his ribs were completely broken, his leg was cut off, and he was going to die soon he... he smiled. I'm sorry guys, I need a minute. When I even think of this tears just come to my eyes. I went home, and thought he was going to live. He loved books, and I assumes that he was going to recover, but have to live with a stump for a leg. So I spent all night researching books and all about the recovery process. The next morning, my mom came into the room. She told all of us to come around, all of my brothers and I. I could tell she was holding back tears. "Boys... You see, all of your father's ribs have been broken. And because of this, most of his internal organs were damages in the crash. So, with this internal bleeding, the doctors... they could do nothing. He went into what is called cardiac arrest... And, he died last night." I am only 16, but was 15 at the time. This was last December 23rd. We are suing the drunk driver that killed my dad.

/r/AskReddit Thread