No one exactly told me I couldn't sing. I figured that out myself. That's because in school, my only experience was "choir" singing, and boys (once their voices changed) could be either basses or tenors. I'd try to sing with the tenors and I found I couldn't get the high notes. I'd try to sing with the basses and I couldn't get the low notes. I thought that meant I couldn't sing.

It wasn't until many years later that I discovered there's a word for what I am: I'm a baritone. I can sing nearly any song once it's transposed into the right key for me. (But then it won't be in the right key for anyone else, apparently.) I just couldn't sing the music as it was written for choirs. And since I never got any individual attention, no one ever explained that to me.

Here's what I still don't understand: From what I know of biology, attributes are usually distributed along a Bell curve. It's unusual for any attribute to be "bimodal." Since baritones are right in the middle between basses and tenors, you would expect there to be more baritones than anything else, and mine should be a common problem. But it apparently isn't. Why not?