My Old Man by Damon Runyon

Author:Damon Runyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811767323
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2019-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

ON COWARDICE

MY OLD MAN used to say that he guessed that the attribute he envied most in other men was physical courage. He said that all his life he had been pretty much of a physical coward. He said that was not his fault–it was just the way he was gaited.

He said he tried to console himself by thinking that maybe his cowardice had kept him out of a lot of trouble. He said for instance he was too big a coward to kill anybody or hold up a bank or commit any other crime. He said he was pretty sure it was more his cowardice than any high moral principles on his part that had prevented him from becoming involved in scandal.

He said if he had been gifted with physical courage proportionate to his intellectual bravery he would have been a great man. He said when he was running newspapers in rough-and-tumble little towns he did not hesitate to take cracks at individuals for their misconduct, official or otherwise, but that then he would be in deadly fear for fear they would come around afterwards to punch his head.

He said that fear always made him miserable. It depressed him to think he was afraid of a thing like that. He said the fact that they never did come around afterwards to punch his head made no difference to him. It merely meant that they were cowards, too, and my old man said that did not relieve him of his knowledge of his own cowardice.

He said he knew very well the feeling he should have had was one of exaltation–of glorying in the idea of cracking those individuals. He said that was the way a fellow with any physical courage would have felt, but that instead of feeling that way, there he sat trembling like a leaf every time the office door opened. He said it lowered his self-esteem.

My old man said he did not think his cowardice ever tempered his cracks and we thought that was where he had intellectual courage but he said think of the enjoyment he would have had out of his intellectual courage if he had also had his share of physical courage?

He said he would have given anything to be like a fellow he knew in the newspaper business back in our old home town of Pueblo. When this fellow took a slam at anybody in the paper he could not rest until he had hunted the slammed one up just to see how he reacted to the slamming. The more the slamming seemed to have hurt, the more the newspaper fellow rejoiced and my old man said that was the way a man ought to feel when he thought he was right.

My old man said he guessed he had been a physical coward from infancy. He said as a child he had been afraid of the dark and of the boogie man and that in maturity he remained afraid of them. He said he was afraid of graveyards at night and of gloomy old houses and of lonely roads.

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