Courage consists not in blindly overlooking

Danger, but in seeing it and conquering it.

Another weird story by Robert Kingston

            Bill, Phil, and Bob suddenly found themselves walking along a street. The reason it was a sudden discovery was that before I wrote this story, they didn’t exist, and now they do. It was a rather sudden and unnerving event for the three young men.

            The first thing to go through their minds was a burning desire to get to a certain café. It didn’t have to be a café, because it would make no difference to the story if it was a restaurant, a pub, a zoo, or a flea circus. It just so happened that a café was a convenient thing to go to, so that’s where they were headed.

            The café (or flea circus or whatever) was around the block of buildings. It was a rather large block of buildings, in fact it had better be a café they were going to because they would be worn out by the time they got there and want a drink. It is a well-known fact  Theory   that there is little to drink at a flea circus.

            Anyway, as it happened, these three guys would quite appreciate a faster way to get to the afore-mentioned café. In fact, they were feeling rather depressed about the prospect of walking all the way there, only to need to come back eventually.

            Then, part of a sudden, they had a vision of this café. Two things must be explained about this statement. Firstly I must point out that this was not quite instantaneous, so it was not “all of a sudden”. The second thing is that the vision was not some amazing image that floated past their eyes; it was simply that they were able to see it through a fence.

            The fence was reasonably high and made out of the sort of mesh that these sorts of fences are generally made out of. On the other side of the fence was the sort of thing that is common in movies, but much rarer in real life. There were numerous car bodies and old bits of furniture littered in piles about the place. It was the sort of place that chase sequences in movies are often set in. It was the place where a sort of chase scene was about to be played out, but not in a movie.

            At the other end of the wrecked car yard there was another fence, similar to the one we already dealt with. Then there was a road, and on the other side of that, there was the café.

            At both ends, there were gates in the fence. And both of these gates were conveniently unlocked.

            So Bill, who never looked a gift horse in the mouth (he couldn’t stand the bad breath), opened the gate and walked through. He made it across the area and through the next gate. Now, this must not be considered courageous, because as far as Bill knew, there was no danger. It was simply ignorance.

            Bill was not only ignorant; he was also illiterate. He could not read the sign on the gate that said “Do not enter! If you do, it is at your own risk!” The sign then went on to say, almost as an afterthought, “Beware of the bloodthirsty, savage, and ugly dog!”

            Phil could read this, and he entered the gate anyway. This was not courage anymore than jumping off a plane with no parachute or rope proves you are brave. It simply proves you are either suicidal or stupid. Phil was stupid.

            Unfortunately for Phil, he had read the sign out loud, and the dog was not fond of being called ugly, and was rather angry. He waited until Phil was well within the car yard, and then charged.

            If this was going to be a violent story, the dog would probably kill Phil, or at least remove a couple of limbs, but that would rate the story higher than a [PG] and then some people might not be allowed to read it. So we will make this dog rather blind.

            The dog missed Phil by quite a distance and ran full tilt into a pile of stuff. I call it “stuff” because Phil didn’t know what it was, and the dog was too blind to see it anyway. One piece of this “stuff” fell off the top of the pile and hit Phil. This startled Phil (who was deaf and didn’t see or hear the dog charging into the “stuff”). It startled him so much that he let out a scream.

            Bob was not illiterate, ignorant, or stupid, and was planning to walk the long way around the block when he heard Phil scream. Bob assumed the dog had attacked (which it had) and that Phil was in dire trouble (which he wasn’t).

            Bob turned around and ran through the gate. On second thoughts, it would have been easier to open it first.

            He picked up the nearest available weapon, which just happened to be a golf club, and raced to the rescue.

            Bob swung the golf club and brought it down hard on the dog’s head. This had the combined result of knocking the dog out cold, causing the dog’s teeth to fall out, and breaking the golf club.

            This was real courage. Bob didn’t go because he was unaware of the danger. He didn’t go because he was stupid. He had a friend in danger, and he went to help, even knowing the risks.

            It doesn’t really matter now if the three got to their café (or flea circus) because the story is over.

            The only thing left to say is that no one was seriously hurt. Phil recovered well from his shock, and the dog woke up with a huge headache and no teeth, but was otherwise fine. In a couple of days time a nice old lady was kind enough to sew the teeth back in with her sewing machine, so it all turned out okay in the end.

            And the moral of this story is that if I am asked to write a story about “true courage” I come up with so many good ideas that I can’t choose. And so I decided to do this, and although it was probably a bad idea it was rather fun to write.

THE END

P.S. One final note: The fact that the smart character was named Bob has nothing at all to do with my name being Robert.

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