Two of my ex-students are at Sing-Sing. What did I say, or what didn’t I say? Of course, it’s presumptuous to think I, a teacher they had only one year, had anything to do with it. Would that I could have prevented it.
In life, we often have a chance to influence someone greatly, and who’s to say we ever recognize that. My youngest brother, as a teen-ager, loved to play basketball with us and I always told him, “Gather all the loose balls you can.” In high school he grew to seven inches taller than I, and when the Boston College coach saw him in action, he signed him up for the first team.
Of course that’s a made up story, though the Boston College coach really did sign him up for the first team. Height is important on a basketball team. But the fact that he got the rebounds meant something, too.
Civilization 