“Why a cartwheel in the rain?” I asked him. He was quiet for a moment. Then, “Because I could,” he said. “Think about it. You’re sixteen, am I right? You’re young, and healthy, and there are a lot of things you can do now that, physically, you won’t be able to do fifty years from now, or thirty, or ten, or perhaps even fewer. Perhaps there’re even things you were once able to do but even now find you can’t. “Sometimes,” he said, “on family visits, I’ll sit and watch my little cousins play. They can run and run and run and never get tired. I firmly believe you could enter any average, untrained
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