Butterfly Effect: What Seemingly Small Things Had a Life-Changing Domino-Effect Impact on You

So I feel like old guys in this business constantly tell me stories of this, so feel free to include any second-hand stories you've heard from others. But for example, I used to work with a super old school MD / Partner, who knew/knows many of the OG partners of our UMM bank from back when it was still a private partnership. This dude literally told me that he accidently got into IB because he was known to be a good cards player among the caddies at the club he worked at, so golfers at the club he worked for as a kid would always invite him to play. The golfers he played with just happened to go on to become worth hundreds of millions as they were building a now omnipresent, international banking brand from the ground up and invited him along for the ride when he was of age. This dude went from a broke kid in Statin Island, to community college, to SUNY, to IB where he stayed until he made partner and presumably made dozens and dozens of millions of dollars when the firm went public. 

All because he could play cards well and a certain big wig banker needed an extra player in one of his games at the golf course one day. 

My story is nowhere near that cool but still pretty wild. I went to a complete West Coast party school (ASU / Colorado State / San Diego State vibes). One day, during a pledge party, I (a pledge) accidently passed out at the frat house with a cigarette lit and burned the shit out of the cheap / plastic bedding I was laying on. Apparently this set the fire alarm off and next thing I know I'm waking up to cops inside of the frat house searching everything because they came for the fire but stayed for the drugs. Long story short, a fuckload of the active brothers in the fraternity got arrested, the frat got kicked off campus and all the brothers living in the frat house had to find other housing, some brothers got knocked for distribution charges, I got put on probation by the school, kicked out of the frat and literally the entire school knew about this and fucking hated me. I was literally a joke of a human being on campus. My parents also shit down my throat when they heard what happened. Strictly because the hatred from my peers was so deppressing I decided to apply to one of the top CA schools (UCal System / USC). Miraculously I got in, stayed away from party life, joined a finance club, met my fiance and never looked back. All because I fell asleep with a cigarette lit and fucked over my frat lmfao. 

Anyone got any good first / second hand stories?