No such person exists.

agreed with @ragingloli = there isn’t one for me. Lots of people have made me what I am today. Even people I thoroughly loathe have had an impression.

So, @msh – there is no such central person.

The brother who died when I was four. I wouldn’t say he is the one person who made me what I am but I have been looking for another brother like him all my life. He was protective and looked out for me. I would just tell him about my life and what I have become.

At the moment it’s tough to single out the single individual with the greatest influence on my development (whatever that means). I will state that I had the very good luck to have exceptional individuals waiting at key intersections on the road of my life, and 6 of them were teachers. My kindergarten nun was obsessed with classical music and LOVED opera. She drenched us in the stuff, and got herself in a lot of trouble for doing it. And I when I think on it, I doubt if the music was the reason we all worshiped her. It was the passion and her enthusiasm that was infectious and irresistible to a gang of restless 5 year olds. God only knows where I’d be if her passion had been about torturing small animals, or overthrowing the government.

Not a single one. haha
I’m a move forward type and while I have fond memories of certain people from my past I have zero desire to re-visit any one person and there is no one, particular, standout person that impressed me so much that they hold a place of high esteem in my life/memory. More part of a general collage
Old lovers are old lovers, old friends are old friends, old teachers are old teachers.

I had the experiences when they were unfolding in the moment, and I’m not the sentimental type that pines for the past. I am too future oriented, out with the old in with the new.
Now I would love to see some of my dear departed pet pals again.

@ragingloli Neither do I. Don’t need another person to be alive, I guess.
The closest to that is myself I guess, but still.

Tanner, my German Shepherd.

My mom she is still alive. She treated me with dignity.

There is a false premise to this question – that there is a single person who influenced one’s life above and beyond the influence of anyone else in one’s life. And while that happens, it is a pretty rare circumstance, and even more rare that it is an influence for good.

Who said anything about the one person who effected your life the most had to be a positive thing?

There was a teacher for the third grade who had was older and definitely disliked children from the very core of her being. She had tenure. Her classroom was placed directly across the hall from the main office, so there was no question as to whether they heard her yelling at her classes. They just simply did not do anything about it. She yelled at her classes constantly.
There were four of us she placed in the front desk of each row. Denise, Rob, Rich and myself. I was seven, the youngest in the class. Eight year olds are still little. They are full of energy and want to learn about most anything you work on with them.
Well, every day this woman becan class by telling all of us that we were not her best class in all her years in teaching. Then she would point to the four of us in the front and every day would say we were the worst students she had ever had in class. We were Never going to amount to anything because we were ignorant…
Every day. All day.
I finally asked my parents what that word meant: ignorant. There are two dents in the ceiling of the room where they reacted after asking where I had heard it used.
All four of us. Every day.
We all coped in our own ways. Denise was the best artist! She learned how to draw her pictures with the paper and a stub-pencil inside the opening of the desk were you kept your ‘stuff’. She mastered it. Rob? He was trouble from day one. If girls like bad boys- there you go. Rob brought an apple for the teacher one day. She put it on her desk located in front of him. Every time she was busy, he poked a hole in the side facing him, with his pencil. I think we were all hoping she’d die of lead poisoning. ( in wasn’t lead- but hope springs eternal in the third-grader’s heart.) Rich was a goofy and fun kid. He ate his boogers. The teacher made him cry on occasion. Me? Well, I developed the ability to zone out. Watch everything and go through the motions, but kinda dead, doing my own thing. Hearing my siblings 45 RPM record music play in my head, looking for fossils at the river and where could I find the best ones next time. etc. Anything. Survival mode.
Denise had three kids and still draws in her spare time, Rob, got in trouble about a car later on- never saw him again. Rich got married and worked at a machine shop. And me? I drove myself mercilessly to learn and do and work really hard. One of my favorite jobs was teaching 11th and 12th grade students in a vocational high school. English, communications, and work skills. Not one of the over 1,650+ kids, Ever, Ever, said that they were stupid and couldn’t figure out how to do the work. The really observant ones saw the depth in my eyes change and the widening of my pupils whenever I heard that. Then we went to work to change that feeling.
So my one person whom effected the way my life would ‘go’ the most?
Mrs. Hannahs, my third grade teacher.

The proper term is “affected”, not effected. A person’s actions affect your life. The effects are caused by the person’s actions.

That said, those whose actions have had the strongest effect on my life have been deliberately removed from my life, and I have no desire to renew our acquaintance. If I could choose a person whose absence I felt had an affect on my upbringing, I would choose my father. The last time I saw him was 18 years ago, and I honestly don’t even know whether he’s alive.

Thank you! I appreciate it~ :)

@Seek One term I like to use is “Johnston’s Law.” And it is “Murphy’s Law is ALWAYS in effect and it can affect YOU!” (Just threw that out for the effect/affect fun of it.)

Have you heard of Wilson’s Law?
It says that Murphy was an optimist.
(I love that one!)