Italian film director Sergio Leonne selected Clint Eastwood to play the lead role in his Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964); For a Few Dollars More (1965); and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). All three films were hits, and Eastwood became a star playing the role of a stranger who was simply called, The Man with No Name. The plot in all three of these movies was essentially the same. A stranger arrives in town. He finds evil and drives it out. He leaves without telling anyone his name, where he is from, or what brought him to town. He doesn't even pause to be thanked. There are many people who enter our lives as strangers, make their mark, and leave the way they came. Most often, these outsiders help us in simple, yet meaningful ways.
A case in point comes from StoryCorps, a company whose mission is to help people share their stories with others. The story is about a young man, Julio Diaz, and is titled A Victim Treats His Mugger Right. The story was featured recently on the NPR's Morning Edition:
March 28, 2008 · Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn. He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?’”
Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome."
"You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help," Diaz says.
Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth. "The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi," Diaz says. "The kid was like, 'You know everybody here. Do you own this place?'"
"No, I just eat here a lot," Diaz says he told the teen. "He says, 'But you're even nice to the dishwasher.'"
Diaz replied, "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?"
"Yea, but I didn't think people actually behaved that way," the teen said.
Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. "He just had almost a sad face," Diaz says.
The teen couldn't answer Diaz — or he didn't want to.
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, "Look, I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill 'cause you have my money and I can't pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you."
The teen "didn't even think about it" and returned the wallet, Diaz says. "I gave him $20 ... I figure maybe it'll help him. I don't know."
Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen's knife — "and he gave it to me."
Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, "You're the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch."
"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."
- What is the role strangers play in our lives?
- How has a stranger helped you?
- How good a stranger are you?
- How good a one would you like to be?
"I like Clint Eastwood because he has only two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it."- Sergio Leonne
"Some strangers become more important to you than family, maybe because you’re not expected to love them. You can leave them whenever you want to. Every moment together is a choice." - Walter Kirn, Thumbsucker
"The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost." - John Steinbeck
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