When I was around four years old - I can't remember exactly, but it had to have been age four or earlier, since my dad was there - we went to the airport. We weren't taking a trip; the visit was so my baby brother and I could watch the planes taking off and landing. Classic family thing to do with your kids, back in the sixties, when air travel was still relatively exotic and most Americans saw the sky only above their heads.

At the airport in our city, back then, you could stand at big plate-glass windows near each gate and watch the traffic out on the runways and taxiways. That's still true today, I'm sure. But other features of flying were different - simpler. You didn't board your plane through a long, flexible people-tube, as is common now; instead, after handing over your ticket, you walked out the gate, into real sunshine (or rain), across the concrete to a flimsy-looking metal stair, and climbed up into the plane. (I've lived in a couple of small, one-airline, two-daily-flight American city-towns since I grew up, and they do it that way still. I suppose that if I were a business executive to whom time is money and luxury is necessity, I'd dislike that. But I'm not, and I find it charming.)

Back then, our city had exactly that kind of setup. Another bygone aspect - and this is totally different in nearly all U.S. airports today - was the absence of security. No metal detectors to walk through. No dual check-in; no comparison of tickets to manifests; no questions: "Have you seen anyone with a suspicious package today..." When your flight was called, you handed the agent your ticket, and you went out to your plane.

And therein lies the story. Take one airport with (by today's standards) lax security; add one family with distracted parents; and throw in one adventurous four-year-old boy - and you've got a recipe for... well... a story. :)

Here's what happened (or so goes the family story; I remember some but not all of this incident):

Some airplane or other, from some city or other, landed while we were watching. The few passengers whose trips ended in our city got off and entered through the gate next to our window. This was a through-flight, meaning that it was stopping only long enough to let passengers off and board new passengers (and maybe freight operations too; I have no idea about that end), and then take off again.

I'd never been on an airplane at age four; in fact I don't think I'd ever been to the airport before that day. But I was big into the little-boy airplane thing. When the plane landed, I got excited. Or, more precisely, I got more excited.

I don't know if my parents were distracted, or if I was just too quick. Whatever the reason, there was an opportunity, and with no warning nor hesitation, I took it. I suddenly dashed toward the gate, out past the ticket station, which was left unattended (that would never happen today), and out the door and across the concrete toward the stairs. I have this memory - dim, but it's there - of flying across that hot apron toward the metal stairs, and hearing my parents in pursuit, yelling for me to "Stop, Danny, Stop!!"

I wasn't about to listen. No way. They were behind me, that was behind me, and the future was ahead, wide open, blue skies. I didn't turn my head, didn't look back.

I made the stairway, ran up toward that mysterious, tantalizing dark opening, halfway down the silver fuselage. They were gaining on me. I got to the top (no attendant there, either), ran inside.

I recall clearly what the interior of that plane looked like. In those days, the entrance to a passenger plane (this plane, at least) was partway down the cabin, near the middle of the rows of coach seats - not up front near the cockpit, as today. When I got inside, I saw all those seats. Most contained passengers, but some were empty. I dimly recall the startled look I got from the man sitting next to the doorway.

I didn't know what to expect, but I knew I'd come to the right place when I saw those empty seats. Room for me! I jumped across the aisle and sat down in the nearest available seat - sitting on (I distinctly remember) someone's folded-up newspaper.

Where was I going? Who cares? Not me. I was ready for adventure.

It was not gonna happen, of course. Four-year-old boys don't get to make their own futures.

Moments after I sat down, my parents arrived. I was grabbed out of the seat by my dad, draped over his shoulder, and unceremoniously hauled out of the plane, down the stairs, and across the tarmac, howling and beating my fists on his back. You're spoiling my big plan! No fair!!

They got me back inside. I was crying by now. My plan (not plan, impulse) didn't work. I wasn't going to fly the friendly skies after all. I was stuck back in my normal life, earthbound, wings clipped, and the future was gonna unroll at someone else's pace, not mine.

I think they left for home almost immediately, dragging me along like a grounded kite.

It's still a favorite family story: Remember that time little Danny thought he was gonna go to Atlanta/Texas/San Francisco/who knows? (My predicted destination got more exotic as I grew older.)

Years later, as a teenager or maybe in college, I read a mediocre sci-fi short story. I don't recall much about the plot, except that it had to do with space aliens landing on earth (ho hum), deciding the inhabitants were inferior (yawn), and promptly leaving (zzzzzzz). But one paragraph buried in the pulp stands out in my mind, vividly. It goes something like this:

John [a TV news reporter, as I recall] stood at the forefront of the crowd. The alien spacecraft's door was slowly closing, preparing to leave Earth forever, its civilization destined to remain a mystery. And as the gap narrowed, John committed the mad, impulsive, crazy act that made him famous to all the planet for generations to come. He broke from the crowd, skipped up the ramp and disappeared inside, seconds before the opening vanished.

I still have no idea where that airplane was going. I just knew I wanted to go there. I saw the door was open, and without hesitation I went through, disregarding consequences but knowing it would turn out okay.

And that's my childhood. That's me.