Dusty Cardboard Box

Dawn and I are back in Minnesota at my folks' place for Christmas. This morning, my mom asked me to sort through several boxes of stuff that she'd saved from my childhood, and had been languishing in the basement for years. She'd saved a lot of stuff (chalk it up to being the firstborn...) so it made for a long, dusty job. Most of it I ended up throwing away, but there were some pretty neat discoveries.

I came across a booklet that I made for a second-grade assignment. It was supposed to be about yourself, your family, etc. One of the questions was, what would you like to be when you grow up? My answer, in 7-year old's scrawl, was "I want to be an airplane pilot."

Until seeing that book, I didn't realize that my dream extended back that far. Early in life I was obsessed with trains, and there was a good half-box of crude train drawings to prove it. I'm not sure why my interest switched to planes, since in second grade I had never flown. I actually didn't fly until I was 11 years old, at which point interest became addiction. I've never lost my love of flight since, and I hope I never do.