Prequel

I've wanted to fly for almost as long as I can remember. My soon-to-be-stepfather was a pilot, and took my mother and I for a flight when I was 8 or 9. There wasn't enough room in the Cessna 150 (N11147) so I wound up squeezed between them in his Enstrom Shark. The distinction between fixed wing and rotary was lost on me at the time, and I don't even recall most of the flight, just that we went over the beach at Virginia Key and a seagull flew into the rotor disk and went *poof!*
He gave me a stack of instructional books that I wish I still had. I read them cover to cover, and by the time I was ten I knew all the parts of airplanes, control surfaces, instruments, what they did, what they meant. I'd have been completely at home in the cockpit, but he never seemed to fly much so I never did. He left the scene shortly thereafter, but I kept the love of aircraft.
This is the part of the story where I then explain how I washed airplanes at Tamiami airport in exchange for lessons, and solo'd at sixteen and took my checkride at seventeen.... except that it didn't happen. I zigged instead of zagging, and it never occurred to me what I was missing, or that I was missing. Stupid kid!