We were the best of friends from the time we met in the second grade. We had common interests, especially Marvel comics. As an athlete, "Paul" was everything I was not. He ran like the wind. Name the sport in which he excelled. Baseball. Football. Tennis. Basketball. Especially basketball.

When he played, he taunted. Winning wasn't enough; he verbally humiliated his far less skilled opponents. I knew it wasn't mean-spirited. I wrote it off as immaturity and that he was merely mimicking a new-on-the-scene brash, cocky boxer named Cassius Clay.

But his verbal abuse made the other kids in the class despise him. We played a game called kickball, and of course, Paul was by far the best player in the class. Once a year, one class would play against another class. It was a big deal, kind of an elementary school World Series.

Each class voted on which six players would be on the team. In my class, the best players were obvious, and they were voted into the team. But........

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