When I was ten, I was tall and gawky, and smaller kids could push me around in quarrels. I remember being very depressed for a year or more, and then I began to develop a fierce resolve to win.
One day, my grandfather came along with a book about Australia and told me, “This book says that nobody but an Australian bushman knows how to make and throw the boomerang.”
“Here’s my chance,” I thought. “I will be the first man in America to make and throw a boomerang.” Well, any kid could have had a notion like that. It might have lasted two days or two weeks. But mine was a power drive that kept on for six months till I made a boomerang that swung around the church yard in front of the house and almost hit my grandfather in the head when it came back. Emotionally, I had begun the fashioning of another sort of boomerang, one that almost killed me later on.
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 53
You can further investigate this story and the relationship it has with shame, pride , and the eventual solution of humility with this article entitled ‘Discovering True Worth’ on the gugogs.org website.