What was I crying about, you see, was not self pity. I was crying with the knowledge that I'd be going to Vietnam, that I was essentially a coward. I couldn't go to Canada. Given what I believed, anyway, the right thing would have been to follow your conscience, and I couldn't do it. Some of it had to do with raw embarrassment, a fear of blushing. A fear of some old farmer in my town saying to another farmer, "Did you hear what the O'Brien kid did? The sissy went to Canada."