Seeing is Believing
One day an idle young man was wandering through the woods not far from his town when he happened upon an old woman standing around a rather smoky fire and stirring a kettle. Being the modern young man that he was, he immediately blurted out his first impression:
"Gosh, you're ugly and whatever you're cooking stinks," he told her.
"Well, if you don't like my looks," answered the old woman, "I can fix that." She then spoke a few strange words, which were followed by a dramatic puff of smoke, and the young man discovered, not that the old woman had transformed herself into a beautiful young maiden, but that the young man could no longer see.
"Now I've protected you from all ugliness and every unpleasant sight," said the woman. "And you'll remain this way until you can find someone to marry you. And it will have to be someone who can look beyond externals better than you, because I'm also changing your looks a bit." Here the woman gave a little laugh and uttered a few more unintelligible words. Soon there was another puff of smoke.
"Ooh, bummer," said the young man, feeling of the new bump on his nose and the deep wrinkles now in his cheeks.
When the young man returned to town, he quickly discovered that his social life was now pretty much a historical artifact. Whenever he went to a party, the reaction was always the same.
"What's wrong with him?" some girl would ask.
"He's gotta look that way until someone marries him," would come the reply.
"Hasn't that plot already been done?" the girl would say, walking off in another direction.