I was lucky enough to start carving at a very young age with an instinctive desire to carve anything I could get my hands on from soap to pieces of wood that caught my eye on camping trips. We never had a normal bar of soap, it was a turtle or a rabbit or something else that made it hard to use it as an actual bar of soap. My family didn't complain, bless them.
I distinctly remember on a family trip to Yorke Peninsula (South Australia), I couldn't have been more than 8 years old, I managed to convince my parents that I needed a fishing knife to carve a piece of soft wood I'd found at one of the lighthouse stops we made.
Not just any old knife, this blade was for scaling fish and they (surprisingly) agreed to purchase it for me. I was so chuffed, it folded neatly into itself and had a forest green handle that fitted perfectly into my pocket. It sat at the perfect length for my small hands to whittle away the little pieces I found whilst squished into the back seat of a car. When I ran out of carving material I'd just open and shut it over and over again and admire the simplicity of the mechanism.
I have no idea how I didn't injure myself with it and I still have it sitting on my bench to this day. I've carved so many treasures with it and it's still as sharp as ever, I love that knife...