"So, what do you want to be when you're older?" is a question that is banded around just as frequently as that most quintessential of American Dream phrases: "You can be whatever you want to be."
That said, the pursuit of 'the dream job' is a search that, for many, remains unfulfilled.
For one man however, his boyhood dreams and abilities have been realized.
A recent article in CNN Money entitled 'Fly kid grounded: A young Pentagon contractor and his tiny spy planes take on the FAA' case studied Shawn Theiss - a man they describe as an "aerial prodigy".
Airplanes were always Mr Theiss's thing. At the age of nine he built his first ever working model that, quite incredibly, was equipped with a solar-powered propeller.
Ten years later he founded Theiss Aviation to pursue his childhood hobby full-time, leaving behind him a burgeoning career as a pilot. Some would have sad he was mad, but he was just being what he wanted to be and chasing that dream.
The company built small spy planes for the US Military.
When Theiss Aviation started, Mr Theiss ran the company with his mom as treasurer and his dad as vice president.
Little more than five years in to the enterprise and the business had ten employees and was both creating and selling a great many handcrafted 10 foot-long planes.
Where Theiss Aviation had a distinct advantage over its competitors was in cost. Each one of these highly-successful airplanes sold for a (relative) snippet at $70,000. To put that into perspective, about one tenth of what the military normally paid.
Since then, the company has become larger and the planes smaller.
In fact, the latest model to be produced is called the Tactical Information Craft (TIC). It's a remote-controlled plane that fits in the palm of a person's hand and is equipped with chemical and biological sensors - a quite incredible invention.
However, such developments inevitably come with obstacles.
The predicament Mr Theiss is currently facing is that the TIC is subject to the same aviation laws as much larger aircraft.
Someone wishing to purchase and use a TIC must fill out the same papers as a person buying a drone aircraft.
This will involve the submission of drawings of every part of an aircraft as well as a number of questions from the Federal Aviation Administration, not to mention months of thumb-twiddling in between.
Mr Theiss is challenging the ruling, but whether he will be successful remains to be seen as the FAA remain committed to the fact that size doesn't matter.
Whatever the outcome, Theiss Aviation will no doubt continue to be a high-flying company whose owner can remain proud of the fact that not only did he know what he wanted to be when he was older, but that he is doing it.
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