Yes, there were. In kindergarten, there was a teacher named Miss Shackleford, as I always called her. I honestly cannot remember her first name, although I saw her years later. She took a special interest in me very early, which made me feel very special. Maybe I can really do things with these words, and so on, and ended up combining my kindergarten and first grade into one year. Which I don’t really advocate, because you end up being smaller, a year younger than the people you’re competing with. But anyway, she got me off to a good start.

I recall when I was about nine picking up a tattered copy of Ebony magazine and I think — I mean, maybe journalists ought to know just how much power they actually have because here I was 10,000 miles away from America with this copy of Ebony magazine and it was describing the exploits of Jackie Robinson and how he broke into major league baseball. Now I didn’t know baseball from ping pong but what was so important for me, what made me grow inches was to know that a black guy had triumphed over all of the obstacles that were placed in his way and there he was now playing for something called Brooklyn Dodgers. Now I didn’t know Brooklyn Dodgers. I didn’t know Jackie, but it helped to exorcise what is the most awful consequence of racial injustice and it is the sense — this demon of self-hate when you have a very low self-esteem.

I had the benefit of some very good high school English teachers. One in particular when I was a senior in high school. I was a jock, okay. I was not a student. Although I enjoyed reading, that was about it as far as academics. But she forced us to read good books and good writers, particularly good American writers. We weren’t too thrilled to do it initially, but she taught us how to do it. Through that, I discovered some of my favorite authors, particularly John Steinbeck. Once I had gone through all of Steinbeck’s books, I realized that I had had a wonderful experience.

I had some amazing teachers and coaches. I had a history teacher in the eleventh grade in American history named Norman Schmitt who was wonderful. He just made American history burst forth, and I was entranced by it. I always liked to study and get good grades, but there were always kids smarter. I might be in the top — oh, I don’t know — six percent of my class, but that meant there were five percent that were smarter, and indeed they were. I also had an amazing track coach, ironically named Jack Armstrong, very much like an all-American boy, and indeed, he was. When we ran competitively, we were second in the country in the AAU junior championships. His teams — as a testament to him, rather than any of the individuals like myself — when I graduated from high school, until that time, he had been 107 and 2 as a record in dual meets, which meant that he went through many different generations of kids, and the kids always mysteriously ended up being enormously capable, which was a testament to him. He would have all kinds of wonderful ways of motivating people. We used to train in the winter as well as the summer. We trained outdoors in the freezing cold, ran sprints and middle distances on frozen parking lots, which is a real challenge as the wind’s whipping and you’re wondering if your legs are going to go out from under you. No matter how miserable you felt, he would be there smiling, and as you rounded the location where he was, he’d say, “You’ve got to make some deposits on training day to make some withdrawals on meet day,” and he was very cheerful because, after a while, you were wondering why were you going through this level of agony. So I realized what I was doing was making these horrible deposits of sort of bashing myself physically, so when it was time to actually compete, it was effortless. So I’ve learned many lessons from great inspirational people. But that seemed totally practical to me, unfortunately, and I hated every minute of it, but I liked the winning when we had meets. That was just an example. But the camaraderie on the team was fantastic.

Being respected, because I have to deal with this each and every day of my life. Each and every day of my life, when I go to a public place, someone might recognize me, or might not, that doesn’t make or break my day. The thing that I walk in expecting is that, whether they recognize me or not, I’m going to be treated with respect.