Time & Perspective Quote by Kent McCord

It lands like a humblebrag, but the phrasing is doing something more interesting: it turns childhood desire into a work contract, and then into competence. "I longed to fly" isn’t just a whimsical kidhood dream; it’s a clean, declarative engine. McCord frames longing as a kind of vocation, the earliest draft of an identity. Then the pivot: "I was paid in flying lessons". That line quietly rewrites the usual coming-of-age economy. Most adolescent ambition is financed by parents or postponed by practicalities; here, labor converts directly into lift. The payment isn’t cash, it’s altitude.

The subtext is about access and the unusual pathways that open when you’re adjacent to entertainment. As an actor, McCord would understand how stories get polished, and this one is polished to the point of myth: a kid so focused he trades wages for hours in the sky. The specificity of "13" and "100 hours" is doing credibility work, anchoring the romance of flight in logbook reality. It’s also a subtle assertion of seriousness. Plenty of people "want" things; fewer have receipts.

Context matters, too. For someone born in 1942, aviation carried postwar glamour and a national aura of progress. Flight was modernity you could touch. McCord’s anecdote taps that mid-century faith in machines and mastery, while also showing the backstage truth of aspiration: dreams often take off when someone finds a way to get paid in the right currency.