What’s a plot twist that happened in your own life?

I suppose it depends on the perspective taken, but the first thing that jumps to mind is:

When I did volunteer social work for the courts that included home inspections and interviews for fact finding reports. These were often folks whose children had been removed from the home, going through court ordered services and were monitored, or family seeking placement in their home. I met with the one man many times at his farm house, and we always sat with him in his recliner and me across in a non reclining chair. Long story short, his recliner was rigged with a short barrel shotgun set to fire when he pulled the reclining lever on the side. He'd planned to kill me when I first came out for advocating termination of parental rights in his daughters case, but later said I was so affable and warm that he had a change of heart. I found out sometime later after he was investigated following an accidental discharge. Paranoid dude never disabled it, just in case he needed to use his murder-chair later.

So a plot twist from a third party view of the movie, or from his perspective. I was just oblivious the whole time.

Another time I went to do a welfare check, went to the mother's apartment, and walked into a drug deal with 5 armed men. That was also a bit of a left turn.

The takeaway here is dress casual and be good at pleasant conversations in tense situations.

I'll try to keep it mostly straightforward and try not to be too rambly, but no promises:
(edit: just finished, ended up being pretty long and rambly, lol, sorry about that)

TL;DR I went from thinking I would be working at my job for the next couple decades to looking for a new job asap. But the real plot twist came a few weeks later. I had a vacation coming up soon so I figured I would go on the vacation and then decide my future afterwards. Clear my head and all that. Went to Brazil to visit family and attend a wedding. I'm Brazilian, moved to the states as a kid and never really considered moving back there prior to all these events. Then we went on the trip and my wife loved it. She loved the city (Rio), loved my family, loved seeing our baby (now a toddler) interact with all my many cousins and their children (her family is not very close despite being geographically closer to us). So she suggested 'why don't we move here'. And since then we've been making plans to do just that. Sold our home, moved in with my parents (who lived just down the street from us). Saving up money. Now we are just waiting for my parents to retire next year so we can all 5 move to Rio together. Never would I have imagined I'd be in this scenario a year ago, but here we are now planning one of the biggest changes of our lives.

So, spouse and I met online. Before online properly existed - we were pseudonymous chatters on a BBS. We practically recapitulated the underlying plot of "You've Got Mail", five years before it was released. Socialist queer/punk/grunge/environmentalist grad student arguing online with a small-c conservative business school grad - check. We had chemistry of the brain - each had no idea what the other looked like, we just had immense fun writing to one another over the course of a year or so.

Along comes a party where there's considerable overlap between my science fiction society friends and the BBS operators/users. I dressed in my then usual don't-give-a-fuck party attire (e.g. a tank top and combat pants), dragged a comb through my butch mop. Once there, I got pulled into a puppy pile on the patio recliner with both friends and strangers. I started talking/arguing with a unfamiliar, but very cute and brainy guy who said "Bite me!" in response to my riposte. So I actually bit his neck, which got his attention thoroughly. [I learned later that tank top side-boob and androgyny were among his top hits.]

During subsequent introductions, it transpired that we were both users of the same BBS. I'd gotten involved with it through the university and science fiction/comp sci folk who ran it; he'd gotten involved through the university and local business development. When I mentioned some of the conversations, we had a shared moment of recognition: "You're namerose!" "You're welder!"

And things went onward from there.

Got married at 35 to a wonderful man. He decided to go back to for a degree in the arts.

During school partner finds out they are trans but have been in denial their whole life. To the point where they don't let themselves play women in video games, lol. They allow themselves to transition to becoming a women.

So, 5 years after getting married, I find myself married to a beautiful woman and a whole different person than who I originally got hitched to. Oops!

I have one about going completely sideways, it still makes me mad to think about to this day, and I am not the kind of person who gets agitated easily.

Things were not going well with my ex and I, so as a kinda last ditch romantic gesture I organised this fun sounding evening at an observatory. It included exciting things like a tour of the place and an hour or two getting shown various celestial bodies and stars which sounded great and she really liked the idea.

First red flag, on the day it was snowing pretty badly and we got a call from the host saying "hey look the weather isn't great, come at your own peril, we are still going to run because the sky is actually pretty clear but you have to understand the road here isn't great so don't come if you aren't confident"
Well, ok, I'm fine driving in the snow, my car at the time admittedly was a hatch back, but I had youthful confidence it would be fine, so we went.

We got there and it was reasonably thin snow, not really a problem to be honest, but it was completely not clear where to park the car. I saw a couple people walking infront and I asked "Hey are you guys here for the observatory? Did you park somewhere around here?"
The guy said "oh yeah we are, we parked down there" and pointed. So I thanked him, drove in and IMMEDIATELY got stuck in thick snow. I then discovered 2 other cars had done the same thing. And the moron who I just spoke to was one of them, kindly not telling me he was stuck and not to park there.
So that was red flag number 2.

We then spent best part of a hour getting cars out the snow, which ate into the tour time, but whatever... the host (who had arrived by now) had promised it was a great night actually for viewing.
She also informed us that on a normal night, she would walk up with us all to the observatory, but tonight there was a handicapped person, so she had to run them up in her Land Rover. Instead she gave us some reasonably clear instructions and drove ahead.

So the guy who led the way immediately took a wrong turn and I actually caught up with the guy and asked him "wasn't it right and not left?" and he, with full confidence told me this was the right way. I had no confidence at that time and I just decided that guy knew better than me, so I followed his moron ass for a mile down a dark road in the wrong direction. Eventually I gave up and turned around. A dozen people behind me asked where I was going and I said "this isn't the right way, that dumbass is leading us the totally wrong way" and I eventually ran into the host who had basically gone full search and rescue for us.

My ex and I did eventually get to that observatory as the astrologist was giving his closing remarks to the handicapped person who had a great time I heard. I got to see Saturn through the telescope and it was pretty cool, but man I was fucking furious lol.

So, plot twist, my ex dumped me after that so I was furious and sad. But that was a long time ago. I can at least laugh at how rediculous that night was now.

Here is a short one:

When I was a Girl Scout in the late 90s, my troop went camping in the north Georgia mountains. As to be expected from a bunch of little kids, we told each other ghost stories and serial killer stories, ran around in the woods screaming, and basically scared ourselves so silly we couldn't aleep. It was great fun.

A couple weeks after our trip, the news reported that police had discovered the site where Eric Rudolph had been hiding out until just a few days prior — basically right where we had been camping. He almost certainly heard us screaming about psycho murderers in the woods.

Excellent timing for this thread, I got my own plot twist(s) this weekend.

So, my mom (early 60s) has been a widow for a year and a half. My wife and I "know" that she's been seeing someone for some time, because she's visibly happier and often goes out on weekends. She never said anything to me, but that's her life and if she wants to keep it a secret, that's all good. This Saturday morning she sent me a message to ask if I could walk her dog in the afternoon, because she wouldn't be back before the evening. Her dog ate something poisonous a while back, he's regularly on meds that make him drink a lot, so he needs several toilet breaks a day. No problem, the weather is nice, it'll be a small walk with the kids and wife. We get there, take the dog, and as soon as we get out of the house, the neighbor (let's call her Jane) from the other side of the street calls my name and asks if I got 5 minutes.

I've known Jane - just as a neighbor - since my parents moved there more than 25 years ago, she's a small frail woman, same age as my mom, very affable, but once she starts talking, you better cancel your plans for the next hour. So I cross the street, and she's visibly shaken. Literally shaking, tears in her eyes, she holds my hand and after a long moment she tells me "you need to tell your mom to stop seeing my husband". Whooo great.

She explains me how that situation is absolutely awful (yeah I bet, thanks for including me in this mess), and I do my best to tell her firmly but very carefully that while I think adultery isn't really great, what's happening here is not my problem. Best I can do is clarify the situation with my mom, and that's it. But damn, I feel really bad for her and am disappointed in my mom.

And then she goes on to tell me how her husband (let's call him John) is absolutely despicable with her since he's with my mom, he's a manipulator, and he's splurging the household's money every weekend. And she begs me, several times, to not tell anyone about this discussion, because she fears repercussions from John. So in the span of a few minutes, I went from "my mom is happy" to "my mom is with a potential abuser who lives next door". Fuck.

The conversation lasted for half an hour, and some things felt... kinda off. Like, John is a monster, their daughter blames her for the adultery, her son-in-law belittles her, and my mom is a heartless bitch that almost let her die when she needed medical help while she and John were frolicking away. It's almost anime-levels of an awful life, and while my mom, like anyone else, isn't immaculate, that kind of behavior is totally out of character.

So I know I only got the point of view of the cheated woman, but I'm still concerned for my mom's safety, and yesterday (Sunday) evening, I decide to show up unannounced to clear everything up. I began with "... I talked with Jane yesterday", and I immediately see my mom's face lighting up, like she's about to hear a good story. What the fuck.

It turns out that yes, my mom has an affair with John, but... Jane has her own affair on her side too. Jane and John have lived like that for years; technically married but each one living their own life. The thing is, Jane is batshit crazy.

John is apparently the sweetest man ever, each time my mom and him get out somewhere she pays for her half (she's really prideful on that point), my mom is better living alone and John has invested a lot of money in his house, so there's little chance he moves in with her, and she even has a very cordial relationship with John and Jane's daughter, who's very happy for her father. They don't hide their relationship, and John insisted that my mom's doesn't change her habits for him - and indeed, we still see her and she still cares for her grandchildren as often as before. On the other hand, Jane is the asshole manipulator, has an erratic behavior, lies about injuries (my mom personally knows the nurse who come to "care" for Jane), once lied by saying burglars had forced their door to try to get John back, and is getting more and more unhinged. She may or may not have tried to poison John by tampering a water bottle with insulin (remember my mom's dog who ate something poisonous? Yeah.)

When Jane learned about the affair, her very first question to my mom was "who pays when you get out?". And when they randomly meet outside, she's sometimes super cordial like "how are your sons? Great, have a nice day".

Now, you might say "well yeah, maybe your mom is the one lying", and of course I thought about it, but the more I talked with her, the more I saw the holes and weird inconsistencies in Jane's story. My mom was totally comfortable during our talk, never tip-toed, and she immediately understood I was concerned for her well-being. And like I said, my mom genuinely looks and behaves like someone truly happy. I didn't find reasons to not trust her.

There's obviously much more details that I left out, but holy shit, what a rollercoaster of a weekend.

I received a Sunday evening phone call from a doctor to share results from medical imaging and my life turned upside down for a while. Thanks to effective treatment, I'm doing well now with some limitations. That phone call was surreal, partly because of timing, partly because I wasn't at that time familiar with medical vocabulary.

It's hard to put the changes into words, but I am now a patient as part of my identity and lived experience and that was absolutely not true in my past.

I also experience doctors being nice to me much more frequently.

I had a pretty tame, friendly reminder of my mortality. In my early 20s my leg started swelling up near the knee and pressing at it I noticed an odd protrusion on the bone. It turned out to be benign (osteochondroma) but by the time it had been diagnosed I'd already assumed much worse. They removed it because it was ultimately the cause of the painful swelling, and I couldn't really use my leg for a few weeks afterwards.

It's of course hard to say how much of this is just the effects of entering adulthood, but I think It rather abruptly left me much less worried about problems that seemed banal by comparison, so at the very least it accelerated something that might have been an ongoing process. Most of all, I had an easier time socializing and making friends afterwards since I'd stopped worrying too much about what people thought of me.