Charlie was a strapping, husky young buck of a kid - slightly buck-toothed with a shock of straw colored hair. While some kids may have preferred books or video games, Charlie could always be found outside playing football or baseball. It's not that he didn't read or play video games - he just got so antsy sitting in one place all the time that he had to run around.

The one quiet thing Charlie did like to do was sit and listen to his grandfather. Unlike when he read books, he could really feel himself inside his grandfather's stories. He could see himself scoring the winning touchdown for the homecoming game. He could imagine himself as a scared soldier storming the beaches of Normandy. Beyond that, though, it was impossible to get him to sit still.

If God didn’t bless Charlie in the arena of intellectual intensity, he more than made up for it by giving Charlie the kind of looks that send young girls and women into red-faced flustered messes. When he was a kid, the girls in school chased him around and tried to tag him with kisses. His lady teachers were always extra-nice to him, offering extra help in exchange for one of his movie-star-in-training smiles. When he got older, he noticed that his sisters' friends always found a reason to come by his house and hang out in the same room as him, even if he was just eating a piece of cold pizza while watching SportsCenter.

He was raised in a Catholic family with two older brothers and three younger sisters. His older brothers taught him how to throw a ball and how to hit one out of the park. When he noticed other guys picking on his sisters, he used his strength and his size to defend them with a few well-placed open-handed smacks. His dad told him that fighting is a coward's way of handling things, but sometimes, a man's gotta defend himself and his loved ones. His dad's words echoed in his head as he watched his sisters' bullies cry and run away.

Sometimes, though, he wondered what it was like to know things. He hated not knowing things. It made him feel stupid. He wanted to learn about things like wars and movies and why his dad always cursed 'those damn pinko Democrats', but he never did understand. It was easier to just go outside and play ball than read a book.

Later in life, when Charlie was in high school, things were good. He made the varsity football team his freshman year and the baseball team his sophomore year. Scouts from Big Twelve schools came to check him out when he was a junior. They sat in the stands staring blankly, and occasionally making a note or exchanging words with his coach. A stream of pretty girls in short skirts vied for his attention. Life was good.

But Charlie couldn't shake the feeling that there was more than this. He envied the kids in his English class who could analyze Mark Twain; he had yet to finish a single reading assignment all year. He wanted to understand the difference between Monet and Manet, but he shared this class with some of his buddies and they gave him a hard whenever he paid too much attention to the teacher. It didn't particularly matter. He was the star of his team. They were headed to the state championship and expected to win it all. The school had never won a thing before, and no one wanted to keep it from happening. As a result, Charlie and his teammates passed all of their classes, sometimes without doing even half the homework the other kids did.