I made an aquaintance in the late 80s. He started to drink in the pub that I ran. He was in his 50s, 5'0 and built like a whippet.
He was the most polite gentleman I ever met, always had a smile & a nice word for everyone he ever encountered. I thought this was some type of deflection tecnique to avoid getting picked on due to his stature. I have to be honest, my first impression was that he would get sand kicked in his face on a beach.
On a Christmas eve one day, my pub was heaving. There was a party of scaffolders on their works night out who started getting a bit rowdy. They were grabbing girls and being just utterly obnoxious. At some stage one of them tried grabbing some girl's arse, she objected and the guy would not take no for an answer. The nice guy stepped in and told them to leave it out, of course the dickhead turned on him.
Now remember this is a skinny 50 year old guy, he tried to defuse the situation even offering to buy the knob a beer but of course him & his mates took kindness for weakness and turned their neanderthal brains on him thinking that due to his age & build that he was not worthy of any respect. I could see the situation was going south so prepareded to step in. Bellend starts pushing my aquaintance and one of his friends throws a drunk haymaker at him. Before I could move, my man, in the most calm & controlled manner, throws down some serious moves which ends in three unconscious bodies on the floor and looks of amazement from the rest of the pub.
While the dickhead's friends drag them out, the little (now big) man left the pub all on his own, right in front of them without a care that they may ambush him in numbers in the car park. Obviously they had learnt a lesson because there was no retaliation.
The next time he came in my pub I bought him a beer and we had a great conversation in which he told me he was bullied at school and felt he needed to toughen up. He joined the Royal Marines straight from school, passed out top of the class got pissed off after a year without action so deserted & joined the French Foreign Legion where he saw action in Vietnam, Algeria & Zaire before joining some of his ex comrades in private service in many small african conflicts. After this, I got to know him quite well and would share a few beers while he recounted some amazing stories and let me look at his extensive memorabilia collection.
I must say, that was the day that in my early twenties I really understood, never judge a book by it's cover....