Where do I start with Dominique? I first met him freshman year of high school when we were playing football. Though a very nice person, Dominique was not exactly athletically inclined, which might appear strange for a member of an undefeated football team, but certainly was the case. He seemed a bit odd to me when I first met him—not that he was overtly strange, but different nonetheless. For example, he stayed on the team when he should have known better, and he thought he belonged on the team when we did know better. In the end, however, he became a part of the team and a part of my life.
Honestly, most of us knew where we belonged on the football field after only a couple of practices. Dominique was a ways down on the depth chart, but he didn’t seem to mind much. In fact, I started to see him as someone who thought he was better than he really was, and those sorts of kids always annoyed me. I probably knocked him around a few times when he got the ball in practice, just to prove to him who was boss. He didn’t seem to care, all 90 pounds of him. He’d be off-balance, out-of-position, and generally doing nothing right, and yet there he was on the next play and at the next practice. We didn’t cut anyone, so he had a spot on the team, but I often felt bad for him and how much he really thought he was doing.
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