It may indicate a distinctly unbusinesslike attitude, but I regard picking up the telephone receiver to make a call with the same enthusiasm I’d muster picking up a poisonous snake. I realize that this is antithetical to all that is supposedly good and true about Our Way of Life—our gregariousness, our ability to “take it,” our Winning Attitude.
I never played sports, and I never liked being in a club whether it would have me as a member or not. I actually quit the Cub Scouts while my mother was the Den Mother and the meetings were held at our house. They continued in our cellar for several weeks while I stayed in my room and watched cartoons.
Organized character-building activities were too much like school. They didn’t teach me confidence in interacting with my peers, or inculcate in me the advantages of being a team player, or instill in me anything other than a desire to retreat to my bedroom and listen to records. I tried to be gregarious but it just wasn’t in my nature. Dale Carnegie would have wanted to perform an exorcism on me, and he’d have called in Norman Vincent Peale to help.
I see now that the Winning Attitude is tempered in the fire of group hazing, which was harrowing enough in school itself. I was commanded to atte
