They were good kids. Mostly. Two boys. Brothers. Lots of energy.

Friends of the family say the boys couldn’t sit still without vibrating. They were always getting into something. To call them “bad” kids would be unfair. They weren’t bad. Not at all. They were simply professional hellraisers.

To be fair, their daddy was a preacher, and you KNOW what they say about preachers’ kids.

Willie, the older of the two, was a senior at Steele High School. He was a good student and an even better athlete. He had plans. Big plans. He was going to graduate, then attend Yale Divinity School and become a minister, like his father.

His kid brother, “Bubs,” was his best friend. They rode bicycles together. They were inseparable. They were smart. They were funny. They were energetic. They brought the party. They had such bright futures.

Until everything changed.

One March afternoon, Willie was playing hockey with the high-school varsity team, when life took a sharp deviation. It was a heated tournament between friends. All the guys were out on the ice, yelling and laughing. Willie took a stick to the face.

The boy went down. He lay on the ground, covered in blood, crying in agony. His teeth were gone, his mouth and jaw a mangled mess. The bones of his face were shattered. The surgeon had his work cut out.

After the operation, Willie was put on strict bed rest. No more sports. He fell behind on his studies. He stayed home and fell into a deep funk. There were complications after surgery. Willie developed stomach trouble, heart trouble.

Soon, Willie was no longer the picture of adolescent health. He was a shut-in. He dropped out of high school. His future in academia went “poof!”

The boy sat around the house all day, feeling sorry for himself. There would be no more varsity sports. No Yale. No ministerial career. It was all over. He would forever be an academic trainwreck and— in the eyes of his teachers—a disappointment.

Not long thereafter, kid-brother, Bubs, got into trouble at school. It was only boyhood mischief, but the teacher sent him home. Bubs quit the sixth grade.

The family moved towns, Bubs re-entered school, but a few years later, he eventually dropped out of high school altogether. Just like Big Brother. It was almost more than their mother could bear.

The boys were often the subject of gossipy conversation around local supper tables. Someone would mention Willie and Bubs, and people would just shake their heads.

Such a waste, those two boys. What a shame. They had futures, once. If only they would have applied themselves. If only they would have stayed in school. Now they were abject failures.

The boys entered maturity and sort of floundered through life together. They leaned on each other. Lived together. They worked various jobs. They worked at newspapers. They worked as mechanics. None of these professions would become lifelong careers. To most onlookers, they were just eking their way through life. Trying to earn a buck.

Until December 17, 1903.

Everything changed. It happened in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It was a Wednesday, 10:35 a.m., when two “abject failures,” a couple of dropouts, named Wilbur and Oriville Wright, altered the course of world history.

So don’t ever let someone tell you what you can’t do.