SOME THINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE

Yep. Believe it or not.  It is true.  I keep hearing this mantra about, "if you want it badly enough, you can get it."  Every time I hear that it makes my teeth grind and I get enamel dust all over my chin.  I, for one have some desires that I know will go unrequited.  I guess I must be some kind of slacker because I have come to be perfectly calm about it all.  I have a couple examples.  One was A.G.  A smaller than average boy whose father had been a professional baseballer in the minor leagues for many years.  Al is my age.  Maybe.  I think that the boy would spend 4 or 5 hours on the baseball diamond fielding ground balls, catching pop-ups [Yeah, I know, that's one of those words] and doing a bunch of other stuff.  It was nice for us too, because we would be there to practice with Al and his father.  You could tell that the father was dreaming big for his boy.  You could also tell that the boy's body would never carry him to the heights of his father's dreams.  It didn't.
I was lucky.  I didn't have that kind of "stage father."  One day when I was about 19 or 20, a knowledgeable person of some ability told me quite frankly that I had better concentrate on school because it was clear that I would never hit the curve ball.
There was a a similar day in my life when my father, you know, ol' EFR Dion, told me around the homework table that it was a good thing that I was fixin' to be a priest because with the math brain I had [have] it was about all I could ever do.  Dontcha love that kind of honesty?  Hey, it works.  It carried over all my life.  I knew that I couldn't be an engineer.  But then one day in the fourth year of high school, late in May, the director of the school told me, "You're going to pass Algebra.  We're going to give you a 70."  This was two weeks before the finals for the year.  It was a subtle way of saying that a priest didn't have to have the math brain of engineers, so I was a go-ahead.  It worked.  But then, I got to be around 36 years old and I had the opportunity to attend a community college.  I had the words of the Director swishing around in my head for going on 20 years at the time.  So I signed up for Algebra 101 despite having technically flunked high school Algebra.  What a stupid move!  I never worked so hard in my life.  But... there is a "but."  I also never spent so much time with three soooo pretty girls in my whole life.  OK, one of them is my cousin, but the other two weren't.  The two who were not related to me [still aren't] were ever so patient and so kind.  They were both whizzes and were in the class because  they needed the college level stuff for the final high school work before graduation.  I would like to say that we had fun, but I can't.  We worked hard every single class day for about 20 to 30 minutes after the session.  My cousin Laura, also a very good looking lady would spend about an hour and a half or so with me one night a week.  She was great.  Now, I don't know about the other two, but Laura is an engineer.  Me?  I got a "C":-(  but at least I proved something to the world. a) I passed Algebra 101;
b) Everybody was right, I am not engineering material.
So see, not matter what, there are some things that are impossible.