Other Ways That a Person Can Be Labelled a Coward

There is no definite way for me to put cowards and being a coward into the right context for there is not one (single) mold that symbolizes a coward. This also applies to one description, age, color, sex, or background of a coward.

I can though tell you that William Shakespeare was right in saying, "cowards die a thousand deaths, but heroes taste death only once." If you think about this, you will agree. And to be totally upfront with you, for most of my young (and adult) life, I could be considered a coward.

I suppose that my raising had a lot to do with me being a coward everywhere I went. My dad swore by the credo, "obeying civil law is a priceless thing." At my first taste of human understanding, I had to agree with him. He always told me that no employer would be hasty to hire someone with a criminal record. Meaning, if I wanted a job and to go far in life, all I had to do was not be guilty of having a criminal record.

So I labored to achieve that goal of obeying civil law in every way from never parking "free" at a parking meter when no one was parked in the space or keeping a dime that accidentally fell from a stranger's pocket. When I observed civil law, I felt great. And why not? Who at any age, loves jail?

I can testify that I was never involved in a physical altercation (fist fight) prior to, during, and after school. But not because I was some Rocky Marciano. I always followed "that" one teacher who always lurks near cowards: Fear. "He" is why I never fought with anyone. Then there was the criminal record thing planted in my spirit. Between the two, Fear and not having a "rap sheet" made it literally impossible for me to fight with people even if I were defending myself.

I forgot to share the influence of my third friend, "Agreement," with you. I was a teenager during Mahatma Gandhi, the founder of Passive Resistance which, broken-down means: If you are not the aggressor, your own aggressor will only have words to use as weapons.
It worked for Gandhi, so why not me? So I used Gandhi's teachings whenever needed. I got laughed at a lot and endured a lot of finger-pointing, but I never went home with a black eye.

"This" area of cowardice bites every young man in the butt. It's "that" time in his young life when his heart "zeros in" on this pretty girl and somehow he just has to have her as a girlfriend. Oh, in his mind he is Don Juan, but in reality, he is The Cowardly Lion (thanks, Bert Lahr, the Hollywood icon who portrayed the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.)

Since this feeling of fear or cowardice is relative to all of you, my male followers, I will not elaborate any further. But I will share with you . . .

Other Ways That a Person Can Be Labelled a Coward

• When the boss "lets you have it" in front of your coworkers, you cower down and return not a word.
• When that same boss just enters your work area, you jump to your feet and say, "yes, sir!" loudly not out of respect, but what he can do to you.
• No matter what an office know-it-all who, just as nature has it, is a former body builder and Martial Arts Master, says about any subject, especially those subjects that involve you, you nod up and down like a mechanical stork drinking water. Plus, the word "yes," is the only word you can force your lips to say.
• At home, late at night, you and your wife are awakened by a noise downstairs, you always and brilliantly come up with some medical reason why "you," the husband, are not able to check out the noise. "Honey, can you please go down and check out that noise, the vertabrae in my middle back is swelled and a ball of fire goes up my spine when I move." (This notion of "the husband" checking strange noises, is not to say that all wives are so girly that they could not defend their homes and families). NOTE: and the previous disclaimer is not to say that there is something wrong with wives being girly.
• You are walking with your wife down the sidewalk and when you hear a dog barking, you jump like someone alone in a haunted house as you yell, "what was that?" and "let's get out of here!"
• Among your sad memories of your days in high school were the times when a "Mr. Lawson," your Math teacher would shake his large, wooden paddle in the air and threaten the culprit who hit him in the back of the head with a huge spitball with a paddling, you jumped up from your desk crying like a newborn baby and owned up to the transgression although you were not guilty. The sight of his huge wooden paddle literally scared the wits out of you.
• When you and your wife were dating, her ex-boyfriend tried to ambush you two while you were walking in a quiet place in the country and you let him use you as a punching bag rather than defend yourself and her honor. You almost lost her due to your cowardice. You even wonder today if she only married you out of sympathy.
• One Christmas morning your "Uncle Bobo," was tagged to play Santa, suit, beard, bag of toys and the "whole nine yards." But when he made his entrance with a loud, "Ho! Ho! Ho!" you ran and hid under the bed in your parents' room. It wouldn't have been so bad, but you were 19 years of age.
• Back to your wife for a moment. In the first moments before your first kiss with her, you told her, "excuse me while I head to the woods and vomit." It was three long weeks before got over that embarrassment. But you convinced her that it was not her, but your cowardly-attitude toward being intimate with a woman at such an early age, 17, to be exact.
• In high school and college, you never went out for football although you had the body for it, but you were terrified of getting hurt. You also didn't go out for male cheerleader for the same reason.
• Then there was that time when you and your wife were visiting with friends and you suddenly jumped onto the couch almost crippling your wife and yelled, "what a huge spider that just ran down up my pants leg!" It turns out that your friends' son, "Chip," just a year old, had pushed one of his toy cars up your leg because he did not know how fearful you were of spiders.

"I would continue, but I am now afraid that you might get bored with my topic."