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ate them. Upset that he was afraid of thunder and light-
ning, he strapped himself to the top of a large tree where
he stayed for the duration during a major electrical
storm. These kinds of things I did not do.)
Although I don’t blame my parents, I can trace
where I got the idea of my being a coward to their
encouragement.
My mother, too, was afraid of everything. She lived
to the age of 66 without ever having made a left hand
turn in traffic, so afraid she was of oncoming traffic. (She
always knew how to make a looping series of right turns
to get where she was going.) She consoled me and told
me that I was just like her. A coward, I thought. She
was very loving and empathetic about it, but my self-
image became unshakable. However, my mother said
she’d try to be there to help me do the many things she
knew I wouldn’t be able to do.
I met my father when I was two and a half years old.
He was a war hero, home from World War II, and it is
reported that when he walked into our home and saw
me for the first time, I looked up at his imposing uni-
formed figure and said, “Who is that?”
“John Wayne,” my mother should have said.
Because my father was afraid of nothing. He was a
decorated soldier, a star athlete, a tough and success-
ful businessman, and the list goes on. But he soon knew
one thing about his little boy—no guts. And it was dis-
tressing to him.
So, both parents and the child himself were all in
agreement about it. The father was upset about it, the
mother understood, and the boy was just scared.
That is possibly why, as I grew older, I discovered
“false courage.”