I did not
grow up in a house
where being physically
tough was very valued. In fact,
physical aggression of any kind was
really out of the question: uncouth, ill-
mannered, crude. I didn't have brothers,
and my one older sister was no athlete. I did
play football, soccer, basketball, capture the
flag, kick the can, etc., with the boys down the
street, but I never got into any fights.

My father was physically very capable, coordinated,
and self-confident, but he was also very much the
gentleman with his house full of females. Any men
my father admired, with the exception of Humphrey
Bogart, were scholars and philosophers (though they
might have had some panache--Camus, for example):
people like Reinhold Niebuhr, Dostoevsky, William
Barrett, Walker Percy. Tennis and swimming were the
only sports that were ever really encouraged. And
to this day I can't even imagine my mother making
any kind of violent movement, let alone a
physically threatening one.