I grew up around planes and my dad (PPL) and grand dad (RFC) were both pilots. Flying Magazine (especially the "I learned about flying from that" stories) was a staple of my youth. I probably had 150 hours of RHS "flying" by the time my dad stopped flying when I was 17 but never had any formal lessons.
As I got older, I didn't have the time or the money to take formal lessons or gain any qualifications. Last autumn a friend of mine who was similarly bitten by the flying bug decided to do a compressed FAA PPL course. As I finally had the time and the money, I decided to join him.
All of my childhood dreams came true when I got my PPL late last year. It was one of the most challenging and rewarding things that I have done in my life.
I now find myself having to reign in my excitement to make sure that I get through the 50 to 300 hour "danger zone" as safely as possible and hope to get my MEL and IR in the next two years so that I spend quite a bit of the "danger zone" with an instructor and have positive behaviours reinforced and negative behaviours overridden as frequently as possibly.
My wife is so happy that I have realised a childhood ambition that she is going to do an AOPA style "pinch hitter course". While this is probably 10% of a PPL, I feel better about having at least 1.1 PPLs in the plane with me than just 1 whenever I fly.