What did I want to be when I grow up?

   As a kid I dreamt of becoming a pilot, just like Tom Cruise in the 80’s movie Top Gun. From a young age I was obsessed with aeroplanes and often my father would take me to the Cape Town airport to look at the planes. What was most fascinating were the pilots dressed in their dark blue suits and their little suitcases? To me, this small suitcase was very intriguing, because the only question running through my mind was where do they keep all their toys? In spite of all 80’s fighter pilot movies and TV programs, to me Top Gun stood head and shoulders above the rest. The allure of the fighter pilot was very appealing, symbolizing ultimate braveness.

For a 9 year old that was mind blowing, and I distinctly recall whiling my time away building Lego jets simulating aerial manoeuvres, sound effects included. What a beautiful time of my life; innocent and carefree.

In hindsight the funny thing is, Top Gun didn’t ever teach me that to become a pilot (commercial and/or fighter) I needed really high mathematics and science marks, which admittedly they never were. And based hereupon sounding the distress call “Mayday, Mayday” ejecting myself from what was an unrealistic boyhood dream. Fortunately, the parachutes back then were still made in South Africa and not in China, affording me a gentle and easy landing. I have no regrets about not becoming a pilot and how could I; after all I was only nine and I was being the only thing I knew how to be, a dreamer.