This Is This

Courage is a scary thing. It’s something to inspire, regret, defy and carry with you. Courage’ll kill you if you’re not careful.

People draw on courage in different ways. I don’t know if instinctive bravery is more commendable than the kind you muster up, but it all counts.

I was sitting up with my friend Chris Anderson when a bunch of drunk college kids walked by and kicked over the metal trashcan outside the house we shared in New Orleans when I was 20.

“Hey, you guys want to pick that up?” Chris called down from the balcony.

“Fuuuuuuck YOU!” said one of the fratboys in a way I found amusingly shameless.

Within a second, Chris ran into the house, grabbed a baseball bat and took off down the stairs before I could say a word.

Chris wasn’t a big guy. He had the squarejawed good looks, but he was a law student who looked like the actors who played young plucky lawyers in TV movies called “I’ll Win The Kids” or “In Todd We Trust”. He must have stuck out a polo match when he visited the projects of Jefferson Parish as a trainee public defendent.

Anyway, I ran after him because before he could say anything, these five drunk guys grabbed the bat off him. I was putting my shoes on when I heard them through the window saying: “What were you gonna do with this, you faggot? Oh you wanna hit us with the fucking bat? Was that what you were about to do?”

All the time this was going on, I was pulling my shoes going “fuck” “oh fuck” “fuck” “fuck FUCK” knowing that I was about to walk out the front door into five drunk guys with a bat, who Chris had just threatened before the fastest and most peaceful disarmament I had ever seen.

I didn’t give it a second thought and jumped in between them. No one had been hit, so I tried to talk things down.

“Look, come on,” I said, “We’ll just take the bat and go. Forget it. Just go.”

One of them, a guy without the bat puffed out his chest and said, in a postured insult: “What did you say?”

“Look, let’s just calm d-” out of the corner of my eye I saw an elbow, a shoulder and a thin line fly by and then DING - an almost metallic noise and a flash of pain in my left knee and I hit the ground sideways. I can’t remember if I clutched my leg first or my head when I landed, but the next clear memory was a metal six foot side of a bedframe which had been salvaged from someone else’s rubbish for the purpose of bringing down onto my left arm.

But my strongest memory of that night was me pulling on my shoes matter-of-factly repeatedly swearing as I went out to intervene to save my friend from a bat-wielding drunk guy and his five friends of whom I had not the measure.

Parenthood has brought on similar acts of courage. I’m not a big fan of large dogs, or even a little fan of small ones, but they all seem to like my kids, who share my feelings. But when they run up, I will always jump in between them and the dog and put myself in harm’s way. OK, potential harm.

Point is, we put aside our discomforts for the things we most love. And that goes not just for frat guys with bats, it goes for eating the crusty bits of the bread when they want the middle bits “end bit make too crunchy toast.”

Courage is the keeping-on-living that Robert Service talks about.

It’s the bravery that Chekhov talked about when he said: “Any idiot can face a crisis, it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

It’s ten years today since my mother was killed. I’m not going to say how it happened but it was violent, sudden, unexpected and what something that scientists refer to as “fucking awful”. One minute we were talking and an hour later the police were standing in my apartment. I knew it was up, too, and I had my shoes on before they took their hats off.

It’s the small details you remember. Like how young one of the policemen was and thinking, “You poor bastard.” Or feeling out of place because I didn’t own a suit to wear in court. 

It’s shitty. Fairness doesn’t come into it, and that’s life. I don’t say that in a bitter way, because that’s just how it is.

I don’t say this to make you feel bad, I say it just because that’s just what’s up. I’m not sinking into some dark place but thanks the concern I’m sure you have because you’re good.

Courage isn’t the avoidance of adversity - that’s luck. Luck runs dry every now and then.

Courage is what you do with adversity.

Keep on.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 8:05 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.