Don’t be beastly, he’s just a very sweet old man…
Just then a man came up to us. He was a small man and he was pretty old, probably seventy or more. He raised his hat politely and said to my mother, “Excuse me, I do hope you will excuse me…” He had a fine white moustache and bushy white eyebrows and a wrinkly pink face. He was sheltering under an umbrella which he held high over his head.
“Yes?” my mother said, very cool and distant.
“I wonder if I could ask a small favour of you,” he said. “It is only a very small favour.”
I saw my mother looking at him suspiciously. She is a suspicious person, my mother. She is especially suspicious of two things – strange men and boiled eggs. When she cuts the top off a boiled egg, she pokes around inside it with her spoon as though expecting to find a mouse or something. With strange men, she has a golden rule which says, “The nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become.” This little old man was particularly nice. He was polite. He was well spoken. He was well dressed. He was a real gentleman. The reason I know he was a gentleman was because of his shoes. “You can always spot a gentleman by the shoes he wears,” was another of my mother’s favourite sayings. This man had beautiful brown shoes.
“The truth of the matter is,” the little man was saying, “I’ve got myself into a bit of a scrape. I need some help. Not much I assure you. It’s almost nothing, in fact, but I do need it. You see, madam, old people like me often become terribly forgetful…”
My mother’s chin was up and she was staring down at him along the full length of her nose. It was a fearsome thing, this frosty-nosed stare of my mother’s. Most people go to pieces completely when she gives it to them. I once saw my own headmistress begin to stammer and simper like an idiot when my mother gave her a really foul frosty-noser. But the little man on the pavement with the umbrella over his head didn’t bat an eyelid. He gave a gentle smile and said, “I beg you to believe, madam, that I am not in the habit of stopping ladies in the street and telling them my troubles.”
“I should hope not,” my mother said.
I felt quite embarrassed by my mother’s sharpness. I wanted to say to her, “Oh, Mummy, for heaven’s sake, he’s a very very old man, and he’s sweet and polite, and he’s in some sort of trouble, so don’t be so beastly to him.” But I didn’t say anything.
Extract from the book The Umbrella Man and Other Stories
By Roald Dahl
All Rights Reserved
New York: Viking, 1998
Call Number: Y English DAH
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How can you tell if a person is good or bad when you are talking to him/her for the first time?
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July 13th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Frankly i can’t tell if the person is good or bad when i first meet him/her. i would often give the benefit of doubt. And i try not to judge or stereotype to be best that i can (though it takes a saint to do that). I would be wary, but not suspicious unless i sense something is amiss (there’s lots of crazy people out there who may just snap). i will only know when i spend ample time conversing/hanging out with him/her. His/her actions and things he/she say over time would reveal his/her characteristics, and/or intentions.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Fascinating!
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 pm
good story
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I can tell whether they are good or not by looking into their eyes. An honest person’s eye would be clear and soft. An evil person’s eye would be looking somewhere else and trying to avoid your gaze.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Interesting and good descriptive words!