Kids and grandkids already did buy me an Introductory Flight Lesson...neat little Cessna, handled everything but the throttle/mixture from takeoff through landing. (OK landing although I recall calling myself an idiot for a tad bit of overcontrol during the first part of transition to final.)
Lots of fun but didn't go any further toward a Private License; too expensive and after the stuff I'd worked around in Navair I felt like I could have reached out the window and pulled a wing off that 172.
About that "just remember to only eat bananas before the flight", xone.....I got rides in all sorts of stuff over the years and never, ever cleaned up a cockpit no matter what I'd eaten before the flight. That includes a few times when the IP may very well have been trying to make me barf. (All in the spirit of good fun.....)
A guy who lived up the road from my parents had been a USAF pilot during the Korean War. His reason for not dabbling in private aviation after he got out of the service was that after living on the edge flying a jet fighter-bomber delivering .50 caliber, rockets and bombs, flying a grasshopper over farmland was "coming down in the world."
I only recommended bananas on advice of the Blue Angels. They taste the same going down as well as coming up.
😊 Nice memories.