Will Smith’s father, Willard Caroll Smith, needs a new wall for his shop, and he decides that Will and his younger brother, Harry, will be the ones to build it. Will and Harry spend every day for almost a year constructing this wall. Daddio accepts no excuses for missing a day of work. When he hears the two boys complaining about how overwhelmed they are by the scale of the task, he tells them to ignore the idea of the wall and simply focus on doing the best they can with each individual brick. Smith explains that this situation mirrors other situations in his life where he has had to learn hard lessons despite himself. He sees now that the key to success in any endeavor is just to keep laying bricks.

When he is a young boy, Smith sees his father hit his mother so hard that she collapses. For his whole life since then, he has apologized to his mother for failing to protect her at that moment. He sees himself as a coward for failing to act. He explains that Smith is largely a character he has created to hide his cowardice.