our beginnings don't have to dictate our endings.

But they often do. My disabled brother, who suffered a brain injury at birth, ended up in a nursing home. He lived into his fifties and then died when an attendant tried to take his temperature with an oral thermometer. He couldn't chew. He couldn't swallow. He had a standing order to put nothing in his mouth.

I was just lucky. I learned to read and was able to capitalize on that. A number of fortunate coincidences gave me a happy high school experience. It could have ended another way.

We have less control over our fate than we like to imagine.