Be Careful What you wish for

“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” said a friend of my parents, as I splashed around in our neighbors’ pool with several other kindergartners.
“Space shuttle pilot,” I responded without skipping a beat. Thus went one of the first manifestations of a life-long trait: I’ve never done anything half-way.
By the third grade, I was so obsessed with aeronautics and space flight, I thought of nothing else. I received the “International Encyclopedia of Aviation” for my eighth birthday, a volume as heavy as a manhole cover and as readable as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fascinated as I was at the time with “fighter jets!”, I read every page of it. I memorized facts and figures the way certain kids memorize sports stats. By the fifth grade, I could name every missile in the U.S. and Soviet arsenals; I could describe every type of aircraft that existed, what was flown by whom, by what air force, and when.
This all of course changed.
In seventh grade I...