When you run competitively, another element enters the picture: simple fear. The fear before every race that this will be the time that your legs give out, this will be the time that everyone runs past you, this will be the time that you throw up before you finish. Humiliation. Pain. Loss. This will be the time. One has to transcend that, too. It’s not really something one can explain to the boys. They have to find their own way through it. All I hoped to do was to offer the Bryson boy some assistance.

He took me up on my offer to work with him individually, although he kept a wary attitude. He always did what I asked, but I felt he was holding something in abeyance, some fear or concern regarding me. We worked around it, but it remained, present and undeniable. Still, I found that working with him was a source of great pleasure. His initial poor condition was thoroughly eradicated by this point, and he could easily cover the 3.1-mile cross-country course in ninteen or twenty minutes. We were working to bring him well under that—somewhere around seventeen or eighteen. I thought that he had the potential to break our course record of 16:37 by several seconds. I had talked to him about that, and about the potential he had beyond that as well. Gifts are not given to be thrown away. This I know. I tried to impart some of my knowledge of life to him as well in this time we spent together. I told him of how I was accepted into Harvard, my excitement at arriving, and my hard work while there.

“That’s a good school,” he ventured.

“It was. It still maintains a fine reputation, but …”

He looked at me, confused. “But what?”

“Should you be fortunate enough to attend such an institution, Mr. Bryson, I hope that you will realize the pitfalls of a kind of victim mentality that a lot of young men and women like yourself have adopted in recent years. By sticking close to one another and reinforcing each other’s dubious ideals … well, I’ve seen a good many young men like you go by the wayside. I hope that you won’t be one of them.”

He looked at me for a moment, then busied himself stretching his hamstrings. “I don’t intend to go by the wayside, Mr. Washington,” he said quietly.

I went on. “Of course there were injustices—there still are quite often—but the best way for us to transcend them is to keep pushing forward, keep achieving, not yelling for some ill-conceived change. Or for a handout. Do you see what I mean?” I paused, and he said nothing in reply. “You have a great gift, and I think, a good mind. I know you can use them both to achieve some real success.”