I remember her telling me that it was the first surgery of its kind, and though the boy died soon after, the operation was considered as much a success to medicine as the brief flight of the Wright brothers was to aviation. That made perfect sense to me and was the first time I considered that failure could also be looked upon as success, an insight I would draw on for encouragement when faced with future disappointments. But at the time, I just thought how cool it was that an old lady kept the bullet from a dead kid. It wouldn’t be until I was in my sixties that I found out, to my dismay,
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