Lonesome trees always draw my attention.
Maybe for the same reason that I am drawn to abandoned or mistreated animals and downtrodden people.
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As far back as I can remember, I always wanted everybody to be happy.
Quite often we travelled around London on the underground and when we sat facing other passengers, I always smiled at them.
Mostly they ignored me but once I got a scowl and after that I was more discriminating with my smiles.
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Sometimes I must have seemed half-witted.
One day at school our teacher was in a very bad mood. She told us she wasn’t going to put up with any noise. We were to stay silently in our seats and keep our hands down!
Poor Miss Plumer. I decided she needed cheering up.
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I rose from my desk, walked up to my teacher and announced:
“I’m having tea with Sheena this afternoon!”
This exciting information was certain to improve her day.
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Instead, Ms Plumer was astounded by my apparent defiance and looked at me incredulous:
“Go and sit down!” .
If looks could kill.
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When my dad was transferred to a remote part of Thailand, I was left at boarding school in Vietnam.
My parents were driving to Thailand and had to be there by January 1st, so Mum took me up to Dalat by train to hand me over on December 23rd.
My brother had been left in England at boarding school, so now it was my turn to be brave and not make a fuss.
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As I recall, I didn’t want to fuss. Boarding school was going to be an adventure and I would have children my own age to interact with. It really didn’t matter about Christmas.
The only problem was that I was terribly shy. I didn’t know what was expected of me, so I just smiled and kept on smiling until one of the nuns decided to call me “Smiley”.
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The instinct to smile probably came from watching my mother who managed to look serene, in every sort of circumstance.
Everyone admired and loved Mum, so I hoped to be just like her, but I inherited none of her many talents.
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Animals never fail to make me smile.
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When travelling, I always approached strangers with a tentative smile which seems to me to be common courtesy and people have almost always been kind and/or helpful.
With the exception of petty officials.
Smile and they become suspicious.
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Customer service staff are indoctrinated to smile. Not that this is terribly successful. As a brand new airline trainee, learning on the job, the only thing I knew how to do was smile, but this got me into trouble one day.
In the summer of 1969, the air traffic controllers were on a work-to-rule and things got badly backed-up.
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At the arrivals desk, all we did was give out bad news about delayed flights.
One man was seriously affronted that I should smile while delivering the news that the flight he had come to meet was expected two hours late.
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He then took issue with my accent, demanding to know where I was from:
“No! You’re not good enough to be English!”
It’s funny the things you remember, but that sentence was bound to stick.
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In my advancing years, I learned something about smiling that would never have occurred to me.
These days I cannot smile as I once did and it’s nothing to do with whether or not I wish to.
It’s that the structure of my face has changed.
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This is not my imagination. I used to have perfectly even teeth. Somewhere after I turned 50, a very long time ago, my teeth began to appear crowded. Now the lower incisors overlap.
Clearly my jaw has shrunk. You’d think a smile would become wider perhaps, in this case, but the opposite is true.
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Also, the old smile scrunches up my eyes and makes me look half-witted like that child I used to be!
I always try to pass on a friendly smile, and make a point of speaking to people and wishing them a good morning/afternoon/evening. There are always those who are suspicious, or think me mad, but that is their problem, not mine!
One gets conditioned to behave a certain way. “Please” and “Thank you” are automatic. Going in to a store recently I met a young woman rushing out juggling several items in her hands and she dropped one. I bent immediately and picked it up for her which rather surprised her, I guess “Oh, you don’t have to do that!” she exclaimed, but why not?
Why not indeed!
It’s a gift to be able to smile and to want to smile. I daresay, teeth misalingnment or not, that gift’s still there and waiting to be handed out every day.
With all the birds and animals here as well as the beautiful sky and country, I have a lot to smile about
I always smile when I look at your pictures (like now with those lovely horses) and I think smiling (at anytime) is a gift. Whether people like it or not. And it was the beautiful Marilyn Monroe who said: “A smile is the best thing a girl can wear” 😄.
Yes. It transforms a face!
My mum used to say, “Smiles are free, it never hurts to smile”. Like you, I soon found it was often inappropriate to smile. Never smile at anyone on a London bus unless you want to be asked why. Never smile at a girl at a bus stop in London once you are over 40, or she wil think you are a pervert. And as an EMT, there were so many occasions where a smile could get you into trouble.
Best wishes, Pete.
Yes! These days I would be hesitant to smile if I was a guy. It’s sad that we have to assume the worst for our own protection. There was a lot of silly banter when I was young that was harmless. These days half the guys I worked with would be arrested. I must read more of your EMT stories.
Here is a link to all of them.
https://beetleypete.com/category/ambulance-stories/
I’m quite happy to look half-witted, it’s a 50% improvement on normal. When I’m out and about I smile and greet everyone I encounter. Try it, the results are enlightening.