showing your mettle

Sometimes, maybe, you sit musing on how well you’d do if ever your mettle was tested--if robbers burst into the bank and announced, “This is a stick-up!” the afternoon that you went to cash your check, say.

Then again, maybe you **know**, because you’ve actually lived the experience--as turns out to be the case for a friend of mine. I can’t recall what the conversation was that led to her recollecting being robbed at knife point,1 but I do recall that as soon as she said robbed at knife point...