Errors in judgment

Even as a child I was fascinated by the goings on in other people’s houses. My friends’ relations were so strange. One girl used to have strenuous arguments with her important looking father. Their contretemps, at times, were quite severe. One evening, he criticised her outfit: it was not only too low at the top, it was also not low enough at the bottom, he stated, rubbing his chin with an authoritative air. She rose to face him, flames soaring out of her nostrils. “Why the hell do you have to be so judgmental the whole time? What’s your problem?” she screamed.

“Well,” he said.

“Well ...” Her mother stood his corner: “Darling, we do take your point and, of course, you must be free to express your personality, but Daddy is a high court judge...”

Being judgmental has fallen out of fashion and with good reason. I am certain that before we form judgments it is important to have all the information at our finger tips, and the truth is we almost never do. Personally, I would do anything to avoid an incorrect guilty verdict, even if that occasionally means letting a bad man walk free. And yet ... when male friends in their 50s talk with a little tremor that is half unalloyed delight and half a sort of cheeky-chappy apology about their trysts with women in their 20s, I don’t know what to say. They look up, and if you’ve ever wanted to see a face that has pride throbbing out of the eyes and embarrassment pulsating from the jaw area, now is your chance. Your pal – your pal who is veritably stricken with joy – awaits your comment.

You have about 15 seconds to wipe Queen Victoria off your face and organise your features to convey that this is the most ordinary piece of information you have heard in, oh, years.

Snippets of hard-core parenting or even dog-training manuals spring to mind. Don’t reward your little one’s annoying behaviour with attention, you dimly recall, so you say something bland and low-key and then change the subject, such as, “Oh lovely ... so anyway do you have plans for pancake day? Me I can’t decide whether to go down the French or the American batter route...”

Too late: your friend has sensed a sympathetic ear. Some people have surgery to correct ears that are too sticky-outy, whereas I have sometimes wished I could have the protruding, “I feel for you”, aspect of my ears pinned back. “And you know, I suppose I really ought to be able to feel attraction for a woman of my own age, shouldn’t I?” he muses, all silly-me-lovable-rogue-what-am-I-like? “But what can I do?”

. . .

In the face of his plight he is powerless. “Ah, well,” you tell him, trying to shut the conversation down for all eternity, “as I am always saying in my column, all any of us can really do is live our lives in our own characters.”

“Oh, you are just so right,” he smiles. “You see all my other friends think I am a tragic case.”

“Oh no!” you hear yourself say.

“But the thing is, that although obviously with a person of 23 it does play its part, it’s not true that it’s just about the se- ...”

“Crikey, is that the time?” you hurriedly murmur and rush to the nearest railway station, even though you aren’t actually planning a train trip until May 23.

Yet recently, when a pal sought my approval – even my admiration – for going out with a woman who was only 12 years younger than he was, as opposed to the usual 20 or 30, I snapped. “Aren’t I being good?” his shiny eyes seemed to say when he told me, as though he had spent the past seven years helping international disaster victims. “You may have detected in me Peter Pan tendencies in the past, but who knows? Maybe I have left those crazy-hazy days behind. Don’t suppose it will last, though.”

It didn’t help that the woman being condescended to so nobly was exactly my age. “Does she have awful trouble getting about?” I asked. We laughed. I tried to introduce a little more humour: “You know, in Los Angeles, apparently, if you are a single woman in your 40s looking for a relationship, you generally have to date men in the 100-110 age bracket.” “Wow, how interesting,” my friend said thoughtfully. “Is that really true?” “No,” I said, crossing my fingers under the table. “Of course it isn’t, silly.”

susie.boyt@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/boyt