Shane Parrish

If you were a serious runner in the 60s, that's what you wore.

So Phil presented his idea to his classmates with passion and intensity, and they responded with what he called labored sighs and vacant stares.

His professor gave him an A, but nobody else cared.

But Knight couldn't stop thinking about it.

When the commercial hit, he laid it on thick.

Remember how we talked, Dad?

How I said I wanted to see the world, the Himalayas, the pyramids, the Dead Sea, Dad?

The Dead Sea!

Well, haha.

I'm also thinking of stopping off in Japan, Dad.

Remember my crazy idea?

Japanese running shoes.

It could be huge, Dad.

Huge.

Now, his father worshipped respectability.

You go to school, you get a job, you buy a house, and you live a normal life.

And what Knight was proposing was the opposite, backpacking trip around the world to chase an idea about importing shoes.

And then something unexpected happens.

In the flickering light of the television, his father walks forward in his recliner and says he's always regretted not traveling more when he was young.

He says a trip might be the finishing touch to his son's education.