“Can I help you ma’am?”
I was at the end of the bottled water aisle, stretching my 5’4” frame, trying to reach a gallon of distilled water on the top shelf. I looked down the aisle and wondered who the ma’am was, because I didn’t see anyone who needed help.
“I can get that for you, ma’am!”
I turned to see who in the world was seeing things. As soon as the stock boy saw the quizzical look on my bearded face, he was mortified.
“I’m sorry sir,” he babbled. “I’m really so sorry.”
over the many months I had kept my
head away from styling scissors.
Hmmm… maybe I do need a haircut.
Time out for an explanation: I only cut my hair twice during the Covid year. After that, I let it go; I’m retired – and it’s only hair. And now, for the past couple of months, my stylist has been in and out of the hospital. But that’s not the point. Here’s the point – Things aren’t always as they seem. And sometimes misperceptions leave lasting impressions.
Youngsters are especially impressionable. I remember my first grade “church school” class – every Wednesday, the Catholic kids, almost all of us in our entire public school, would get out early and be bused to St. John the Baptist for our weekly religious instruction. The parish’s pastor also happened to be the auxiliary bishop,
tendency to intimidate a 7-year-old
boy – and many people much older, too.
One Wednesday, the bishop – the Most Rev. David Cunningham – glided through the classroom door. He was stunningly resplendent in his red and black regalia, complete with skullcap (zucchetto) and flowing cape. As our teacher, a tiny young blonde woman, tentatively approached the bishop, he held out his hand, palm down. The woman dropped to her knees and kissed his ring.
For a seven-year-old Catholic boy, the message was loud and clear – priests, especially old, white-headed priests, were pretty much on the same level as God.
That impression lasted about seven years. But it was another old, white-headed priest who sowed the doubt. He was a visitor saying Sunday Mass in my boyhood church of St. Daniel in Syracuse. The rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar had been released a few weeks earlier. The priest spent a large part of his homily condemning the album, calling it heretical. So what do you think a 14-year-old boy steeped in popular music up to his ears is going to do? Yup, you guessed it.
The experience was transformational. It wasn’t just the music, it was the message. Most impactful was The 39 Lashes. Each successive lash was increasingly intense, eventually causing me to flinch with each crack of the whip. The Passion was no longer a concept. The two-dimensional, black and white whipping jumped off the page of the gospel as the music exposed the profound reality of Jesus’ suffering.
Jesus Christ Superstar is not heretical – the Vatican endorsed it in 1999. Priests are not God. And I’m not a ma’am. But the stock boy reminded me the necessity for reassessing long-held beliefs, challenging tenets that may be the result of wrong impressions or misguided teachers. Maybe you’ll discover business as usual can become better, smarter and more rewarding business as usual – without having to endure any lashes.
If you liked this story, I hope you will choose to subscribe. Just scroll down, enter your email address and click “Subscribe.” I try to upload a new entry every couple of weeks or so.
Now What? 