Who is your favourite pilot?

My son is like a sponge. He soaks up information even when you think he isn’t listening, isn’t interested, or is lost in his own world. He stores it all away and then—just when you least expect it—out it comes. Delivered with conviction, usually at a very random time, and often leaving me either in stitches or completely baffled.

The other day, my brother helped out by taking my son and his cousin out for dinner—a boys’ trip. My son loved it. Clearly, my brother had chatted to him a lot, because over the next few days, my son began reeling off all sorts of facts about him. Gems like:

• “He has big muscles.” Bigger than my husbands apparently.
• “He doesn’t waste food because that’s wasting money. Even if he’s not hungry, he still eats the food.”

It was hilarious. It’s like he becomes temporarily obsessed with the person he’s just connected with. For a few days, it’s all about them. He watches, listens, absorbs—and then reports back like a tiny, very specific private investigator. I never stop being amazed.

That same week my son was in the shower and I was running him a bath at the same time. I honestly have no idea why but lately my son had started having a shower before going in the bath. Over the last few months we had gone from barely showering/bathing to showering then bathing, sometimes twice a day. Feast or famine comes to mind but as with everything I tend to just go with these situations now. If he doesn’t shower he doesn’t shower, if he wants 2 showers followed by 2 baths a day then that is what we do.

We had just recently had a new bathroom, which was something I was really worried about as it meant disruption and change, something my son does not like at all but in actual fact the whole process went extremely smoothly and after the bathroom was finished my son really loved the “gold” taps we had and said they were fancy and this seemed to prompt him to want to wash. I felt so pleased that this bathroom had gone without any hiccups until a few weeks later when we realised that all the tiles we had fitted were actually falling off the wall……..they were all literally coming away from the wall. And you know when you just think……someone please just give us a break. But I guess that is a whole other blog post – stay tuned for that one!!

So my son is stood in the shower and he shouts over the sound of the shower, the bath running and the extractor fan….

“So, who is your favourite pilot?”

Pilot? Had I heard that correctly. Did I know any pilots? I’m not sure I did. But then I remembered that a long time ago I had actually been flown by none other than Bruce Dickinson from the band Iron Maiden – True story. I can remember being sat on this flight by Astreaus Airlines – an airline I had never heard of and the pilot comes on and announces himself as Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. How many people can say they have been flown to their holiday by a member of Iron Maiden. Well me that’s who. So Bruce Dickinson is my favourite pilot. But before I had time to answer this he said…

“Mine’s Amelia Earhart.”

And then I realised that once again, like the Saints of the the other week, he must be learning about Amelia Earhart at school. I asked him so and he said yes. And he reeled off lots of information about her.

• First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
• Broke multiple records.
• Went missing in 1937.
• They still haven’t found her plane.

He was buzzing with facts. The same thing happened the week before with Saints. And Albert Einstein too. It fills me with joy because it shows he’s switched on, he’s learning, and he wants to tell me everything he’s discovered—just usually at the most unexpected of times.

Of course like everything he asked me I then had to do my own research and in the same week he asked me, there was actually a news story about how a company thought they had located Amelia Earhart’s plane. It was almost as if he knew this news story was coming out and so he asked me about her. And once again this leads me to Is my son psychic? It seemed too much of a coincidence that in the week he asked me about her there is a news story about her.

This is how life is right now. Random questions in the middle of bath time. In fact this is how life is when life is good. Me Googling things I didn’t know I needed to know. Conversations I didn’t expect to be having. I love it. It tells me his brain’s switched on. He’s learning, he’s thinking, he’s storing it all up to share with me at the strangest of times.

So there you go. My favourite pilot? Bruce Dickinson. His? Amelia Earhart.

Neither answer is particularly ordinary.
But then again, neither are our days.

So who is your favourite pilot? I’d love to know.