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very close friends of mine, you know.

It's interesting that you said, was I that way in high school? No. I would be considered “quiet,” in high school. I don't think I would have been considered quiet in college.

I draw the inference, you weren't active in extra curricular affairs in high school then?

No, no. I wrote some poems for the literary magazine, and I was always surprised that they were published. I was by no means the big man on the high school campus, you know. Mn-mm. We had a small group of black students who were the better students, who clubbed together, you know, and visited each others' homes. There was absolutely no interracial social involvement in George Washington High School when I was there. I don't remember any overt hostility, except Mr. Gottesman's betrayal. But I certainly wasn't a part of the overall milieu of George Washington High School. Nor did I even think about it, you know. But it was a quite different story in college. From the very beginning, I jumped in like a fish who had been out of water too long, and just started thrashing around, and I knew that this was the place that I wanted to be, will be. People started making predictions by my sophomore year about my going on in academic work. Others. an for office. I think by my junior year, I was editing the school newspaper, which I think was unprecedented for a junior to do it. I was editing because I was pushy. I was on the newspaper, I guess, in my freshman year as a reporter, and that's another -- I was on the newspaper because I was a busybody.

As I said, if I were someone else looking at me, I'd say,