A boy passed this way, looking and listening and testing the limits of the body he was given, and he found the limits worth stretching. He ran across a field and looked up and up and up at the sky. He grabbed a bat and spent an afternoon hitting balls across the field, then running to retrieve them and hit them back the other way.
Tucked away with a comic book was another boy, a gawky thing who struggled and failed to pull himself up a rope, who couldn’t quite get the hang of hitting the little ball with a stick, and walked instead of running to look up and up and up at the sky. Instead of testing his body’s limits, he fiddled with words and numbers.
The strong and swift boy envied his friend’s ability to work numbers and craft images with words.
The gawky one said, “Yes, but to know the joy of the ball clearing a fence — or to catch a touchdown pass, just once …”
