Hmmmm.....gotta go back a bit for this one. Also probably the only *good* day I can remember, cuz all the others that *were* good became bad/associated with bad as time went on. Also gonna be kind of a longish post cuz it requires a wee bit of backstory and the story itself is on the longer side...I'll try to make it as concise as possible
Anyway, so growing up, dad was floor manager at a machine shop that made jet engine parts, and so was always bringing home posters and calendars of fighter jets from promo material from work, as well as toy models from business trips. On top of that, he took me to see Star Wars ANH when it re released in theaters in the early 90s (which incidentally was the first movie I ever saw in a theater, and I was 6), and also showed me Top Gun around the same time. Soooooooo between the dogfight scenes in SW, a movie literally about dogfighting, and constantly being exposed to jet fighter paraphernalia, I was pretty instantly hooked on flying, and wanted to be a fighter pilot. When I got into gaming a short time later, flight sims were one of my mainstays. Unfortunately, I also found out fairly early on that because without corrective lenses of some kind, I'm near the 20/200 limit for being legally blind, the military would never take me...nor would any civilian flight operation. Dreams smashed.
So my only way to engage with this passion was through the flight sims, and I played all kinds to death-realistic, arcade style, sci fi, you name it. Well, when I was 19, dad said he was gonna take us to LA on one of his business trips as our summer vacation. While we were out there, we found-completely by chance-this place where a bunch of ex USAF and USMC pilots had pooled money, bought a warehouse, filled it with a bunch of full cockpit style military surplus simulators, with a little lobby area. You pay the not-exactly-cheap fee, they sit you down with everyone else who's there, give you a little briefing on how to fly and work the controls, explain what you'll be doing, then put you all in your cockpits. Then they run everyone individually through every takeoff and landing scenario there is-day and night, land and sea, fair weather and foul-and when everyone's done that, they throw you all in a free for all dogfight with each other over virtual San Diego.
Now as I said, I played realistic flight sims at home, and I played them...well, realistically. I knew how to fly already, basically, and I was good at it. So I basically napped through the briefing. Aced all the takeoff and landing scenarios once I got in the cockpit, and then came out of the dogfight with 8 kills, no deaths (they did respawn you if you died, so the no deaths thing is actually relevant)...which IRL would have made me instantly qualify as an 'ace', since that status is granted after 5 kills; and 3 of those kills were with guns, rather than missiles; and in modern dogfighting, gun kills are nearly unheard of.
I climb out of the cockpit, and some of the owners pull me aside to talk to me, start asking where I learned to fly. "Video games" I deadpan, and tell them I've been playing simulators at home since I was 6 or 7. They look at each other and ask if I ever thought about joining the service. "Only every day of my life" I say. They ask how old I am, and I tell them I'm 19. They ask why the hell I'm not in basic training then, and since I was wearing my contacts instead of my glasses that day, i just point to my eyes and say the military would never take me, I'm near legally blind without lenses. They just kind of look at each other and say "Well that's a damn shame, kid. You are without doubt one of the best civvies to come through here, and the ONLY one who did that well and slept through the briefing. Honestly we were kind of laughing at you among ourselves, 'look at this kid, thinks they're hot shit, can't wait to see them get wrecked'. Damn if you didn't prove us wrong.'
So yeah, having my skills be validated by the literal pro's and being told that if it weren't for my eyes I would have actually made a good pilot, and was really good at something I was super passionate about, was pretty awesome. As an aside, now you all also know why Barnstormer is my OC