[One last bit, then we’ll drop this story and move on.]

The old shop keeper, chin planted firmly on his chest, frowned theatrically at THIS THING. Frowned as if it was a relation who had wronged him somehow. Perhaps a son who had shamed him in some unforgivable way.

Then the bald man – – yes, still frowning – – bit into his lower lip with his espresso-hued incisors.  He glared at his visible affliction – – as if it were not an oversized and neglected hernia at all but a symbol of his own mortality. Suddenly, he lifted the hair-covered back of his hand. Didn’t strike, but only lifted the hand, while frowning, while still biting his lower lip. Lifted it just above the hernia.

The old man, I realized, was menacing THIS THING, threatening to strike it in a familial and Old World sort of way.

Also published on Medium.