“Would you like to own a store, or have a stiddy job, and never have anybody sneer at you any more and call you a tramp?”
“Sonny,” says Mr. Atkins, “you don’t never need to worry about what folks thinks of you. What you want to worry about is what you think of yourself.”
“I’ve been doin’ that, Dad.”
“And what do you think of yourself?”
“I hain’t sure, but it looks kind of like I was goin’ to think that the way we live hain’t what you’d call valuable. Seems like everybody ought to be makin’ somethin’ or doin’ somethin’. Seems like I’d like to have folks respect me—and it seems like I’d like sort of to live the same way other boys does and play with ’em without their folks tellin’ them to git away from me.”
“Sonny, you hain’t gone and got ambitious, have you?”
“What’s ambitious, Dad?”
“Ambitious means wantin’ to git to a place where you can look down on other folks.”
“I don’t quite agree with you, Mr. Atkins,” says a voice, and we looked around to see my Dad standing there. “I believe ambition means a desire to improve yourself and to become something more valuable than you are. It means that you’re not satisfied with yourself.”
Mr. Atkins got up and looked at Dad, and Dad looked back at Mr. Atkins.