Being a very wise young lady I could give you a long dissertation on
the various causes of bashfulness, but being a very wise young lady I
will only tell you a few of the outward manifestations.
Let us suppose that you were once a bashful person and have decided to
give me the requisite information instead of my giving it to you.
_What You Said of Bashfulness_
You said that bashfulness is mostly youth and when it lasts past
adolescence it is a sure sign of arrested development. Please
understand, you said, that it is not at all bad to be just the least
bit bashful. Most of the greater minds have been behind the most
bashful faces in the universe.
It takes a very small thing to make a boy become a bashful young
animal. Usually he is quite sensitive. That is his heritage or his
childhood training; I will not attempt to say which, because we are
going into a long dissertation on the relative values and importance of
heredity and environment.
Let us say that he has been born with very active sensory nerves and
that lack of sufficient practice or co-ordination has made him most
awkward.
We have already said that his sensory reactions are very acute and that
he understands the most hidden, even the most veiled jibe delivered
in his direction by one of his more fortunate contemporaries. We will
say that the contemporary is one of those youths who from babyhood
concentrates on his muscular activity and that his movements even
at the age of fifteen are facile and fluid. Like as not our bashful
fellow, while he has swum and played outdoors a great deal, has been
more concerned about his mind and what was going on in it. You will
find, too, that this youth is far more sexually aware than his facile
little enemy.
His is a fire that burns slowly. Probably at twenty-five people will
be amazed at his extreme youth. He is the type of young person who
attracts people by his vital appearance and who disappoints them later
because he is so simple. You will find him using words of one syllable
mostly and those very sparingly. I am telling you what he is liable
to be, not what he is now. He may become one of the best dancers
possible or he may develop his conversational abilities so that he is
not only brilliant and scintillating but sought after. He is usually
acute enough to see just what things please the greater number of
people and then proceed to cloak himself in a perfect disguise to guard
his sensitive nature against the ravages of his more active but less
understanding contemporaries.
You wonder how I know so much about that sort of young man? It is quite
a simple matter. I am he. But you also wonder what it is that I cloak
myself with? It is my dilettante exterior. Despite all my insouciance I
really have convinced myself that I have a rare understanding. And I am
skeptical of that. Sometimes one’s shell becomes so thick that there is
scarcely any kernel at all.
The only possible assistance that can be given to this sort of youth
is a lot of understanding and sympathy in the earlier stages of his
boyhood when that awkwardness is so rampant.