He always looked like he was posing for a photo shoot, but to actually call him a ‘poser’ would be cruel because not only is that a negative judgement, but he’s not here to defend himself.
I settled for ‘Mafia Man’, not because he wore a hat with a white band or spoke with a thick gangster accent, but because he looked Italian, wore a dark suit and never entered the shop without pair of sunglasses in his hand. No matter the weather or season, the shades were his close companion. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, I’m sure. Our bright lights were more dazzling than the dismal streets outside, yet he never once squinted or put them on to look at something.
He was a tall young man in his late twenties but acted rather odd. Whether this was to draw attention to himself or not, I cannot say. But if it was attention he was after, he got it because he was very good-looking. It appeared that he knew it, and that was what made people stare.
He came in weekly, without fail, but to my knowledge, he never bought anything. He would just wander slowly in a circle around the 3 square display tables, looking down at the goods, but not touching them. Despite being young, he never perused the music and neither did he ever venture upstairs.
After his usual trip around the tables, he would leave the shop and turn left, walking past our large window. While striding ahead, a ritual would take place whereby he would put on his sunglasses with one hand while placing the opposite hand in his pocket. It would be raining, cloudy, dark or snowing, but ‘Mafia Man’ never failed to do his catwalk strut with dark lenses in front of his eyes.
There’s nothing more annoying than knowing that somebody who appears to be wanting attention knows they have succeeded in getting it. With this in mind, I tried not to watch him when he did his exiting the shop ritual. But it was hard. I knew that his peripheral vision would pick up on the fact that I was standing by the till turning my head to the left and watching him walk off down the street. So, I would put my left hand on my cheek with my fingers just above my eyebrow, and peer through them, not-so-surreptitiously. Usually, the better option was to swivel around 180 degrees, to face the computer software that was displayed on the wall behind me. This, he noticed too, I’m sure, especially as Ilumina boxes weren’t that interesting.
As time went by, his hairstyle changed from a floppy fringe and short sides, to a slicked-back shiny pompadour, with the nape area so long it could have been placed into a small ponytail. This did not suit him at all, and it only served to make him more worthy of his new name, because now he looked like a godfather in training.
As no purchases or queries were ever made, I only ever had one conversation with him. That day, there was no-one else on the ground floor and just as a full circuit of the first table had been completed, he uncharacteristically decided to give me eye contact and ask what church I attended. His air of mysteriousness dropped as he proved he could carry-on a conversation without checking his appearance in the reflective surfaces nearby. We chatted for a while and I felt rather guilty for assuming he ‘loved himself’, for he was quite gentle-natured.
Casper suddenly emerged from the basement, and the ‘Italian gangster’ ended our conversation abruptly. He quickly became ‘Danny Marcini’ again and made his way to the door. After removing his trusty shades from his pocket, he headed up the road back to Sicily.
Repentance review
Isn’t it foolhardy how we can judge people by their appearances when in reality, they are nothing like we imagine? I wonder how I would feel if I knew that somebody was making incorrect assumptions about me by the way I dress or by my manner.
We do not really know what is going on in someone’s heart and we often are completely wrong about how we think they would be in any given situation. One year during the stocktaking week, I remember being mildly offended when Casper admitted to me that he deliberately did not pair me up with his father-in-law, because he feared I would be too much for him.
“What do you mean?” I had said defensively.
He thought that I would become over-familiar and distract him from his calculations. He thought that I would start going on about Jesus in between calls of ‘£6.99.’ I knew I would not have been like that at all, and besides, I would have been too busy trying to make sure my elderly companion did not trip over the wires. I frowned at Casper but realised there was no use in defending myself; we all misjudge people from time to time and it is something we constantly have to work on with the help of the Lord.
I’m sure that our non-buying friend had a perfectly good reason for acting the way he did. Maybe he was one of the many customers who enjoyed visiting the shop in their lunch break just to feel the Spirit’s presence.
I will never know, but one thing I do know is, I was guilty of doing the very thing Jesus warned us about: “Do not judge others or you will be judged also.”
