I have a friend who keeps himself bathed in an unrelenting state of contrasting others. I once asked this friend, "You like this shirt? I like wearing blue." He let gravity pull his eyelids downward and monotonously said, "It's teal," then added, "And no, I don't like it."

It seems his consistent mission in life is to influence a frown from those around him. In a way, I appreciate this. At least Matt has a mission in life. Matt is my friend's name.

He particularly detests the philosophy behind the statement anything is possible. I met Matt at a charity event, one that benefit families of cancerous children - families riddled with financial burden. Matt's role in the event was catering. My company was sponsoring the occasion. In organizing the benefit, I had troubles sourcing the catering since my exclusive had gone bankrupt for some mismanagement of funds or something. So a constituent of mine referred me to Matt's company, All In Catering Services.

I had conducted my business with Matt solely by phone, so I hadn't met him until the event was almost over. I was surrounded by a few affluent individuals, people of the important kind (in my world, contributors) when someone ushered Matt to my little crowd and introduced us. His handshake was flaccid as was his reaction to meeting me. We greeted each other kindly enough, and our group conversation resumed. A woman said, "It's efforts like these that keep things in progress," referring to the benefit. Then she uttered those words that struck Matt's fundamental goal in life, brought it to cause: "We've done a lot for this community but I really think we can progress to reaching out further - maybe even as far as we need to - if we just keep at it...anything is possible."

Eyelids...gravity. "Really?" Matt joined in. "Anything?" he openly refuted. "Well then I imagine I can pluck the eyes out of my head, glue them to my ears and finally see the b.s. in everything I hear." I watched with incredulity as I observed this man scan his audience for their reactions.

He seemed somewhat fulfilled with the deadened discourse that followed. People sipped from their cups of apple juice, champagne, water. Their eyebrows defied gravity as they scanned the company themselves, looking from the tops of their eyeballs at one another. A few slowly turned away, and the remaining few duplicated the action. Once they pivoted far enough on their heels to be fully rotated, each sauntered away.

I didn't drink from my cup, nor did I pivot and excuse myself. I simply spectated the scene. Initially, I had supposed this surely would be the last I saw of this newest character in my life, but that was not the case. All In had been a good hire for my company, so, with my exclusive service company kaput, I nurtured a business relationship with Matt quite promptly.

Over time, I cautiously developed a friendship with the guy.

Anything is possible...this is my favored debate with Matt. Perhaps I most appreciate the inexorable state of debating with him most. I believe this, else I have no useable reason to explain my rapport with him. I like to say those words to him now and then, usually anytime the opportunity presents itself.

Once, when we were in my car together, laboriously squeezing our Dairy Queen vanilla shakes through the straws (a tasty commonality of ours), he made an offhanded comment about the homeless people who were lining the streets at that moment. "Pitiful. It'll never improve with our societal class and classless system."

Of course inclined by nature by this time, I offered, "I don't know. Maybe someday they'll all be off the streets. Anything is possible."

Matt recognizes this is a button pushed. Moreover, he recognizes I know right where that button is and how to depress it. In this regard, his responses are void of emotion anymore, so this viewpoint, as I verbalize it, merely puts him in a rather calm mood of concentration, inspired to outwit his last response to this statement. He's spat some real doozies, like, "Really? Then I guess I can impregnate my father to get the brother I never had." And, "Really? Then I guess flying pigs really do freeze in hell."

This time, he seemed somewhat prepared for the occasion as he said, "Really? You can't divide something by zero."

I rarely think of some earth-shattering retort in these fleeting sessions. In this instance, though, a vision of the spreadsheet error #DIV/0! flashed across my mind's eye. I'm not certain how I constructed my response so efficiently but I said, "Sure you can. Zero is nothing, so if you never divide a something by anything, then you're effectively dividing that something by zero."

I forced more ice cream upward through my straw as we waited a red light in front of us to concede to green. With no reaction from Matt, I turned to him. He was looking at me, quizzical.

"Right?" I asked.

The light turned green. We didn't say anything more during that ride.