Should You Always Smile When Alone?

[SticksandStones]

I'm not big on smiling for effect, even when I was having my picture taken. I never smiled for effect when playing guitar professionally. I smile a lot more now that I have a rescue dog, and I don't even realize it.

My neighbors fawn over this dog and visit more often, and they are pretty smiley, too. Al is a pretty long-term mill-worker in a mill that I abandoned over 20 years ago and he loves Duke. I have had Duke for exactly 7 days today, and Al baby-talks to him every time he sees him. Grins all around.

Smiling with no reason, nor motivation? Sounds like someone wants to be a model and can't get past the southern beauty-pageant model.

Smiles should be spontaneous and genuine. If you have to rub your teeth with Vaseline, head down the road.

I smile every time my cat jumps in my lap and every time my dog greets me at the door. It's nice to be loved. :)

 

[DaveC426913]

People always tell me to stop smiling. Strangers come up to me and tell me how much my life sucks and I have nothing to smile about. Then if I'm frowning, they'll come up to me and tell me no one cares about my problems, so stop frowning.
If I'm not smiling or frowning and just having my normal face, people come up and tell me how ugly I am.
I tell them to just let me live. They tell me to kill myself.

This did not make me smile.

Oh man... mashed potatoes just came out of my nose...

This did not make me smile.

...I really, really hope you were eating mashed potatoes as you were reading...

This made me laugh out loud.

I like the way you think.

 

[DaveC426913]

I smile a lot more now that I have a rescue dog...

Turbo, you don't get to keep them. You have to give it back.

 

[turbo]

Turbo, you don't get to keep them. You have to give it back.

No I don't. Duke is MINE, MINE, MINE. He is the Velcro Dog and I'm HIS.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Whenever I see a baby or toddler, I always smile at it. I think that's a natural human response. Anyway it's one of the few times I smile. Like W.C. Fields, I start my day with a smile and get it over with. My wife says I scare her family members away. This is a shame since I really like them. So I decided that I would start smiling more. I have been told to let a smile be my umbrella on a rainy day, so for practice, I tried it. This lead to pneumonia, not a particularly good disease for inducing smiles. Then I tried to smile and smile and still be a villain. This landed me in jail, also bad for smiling. In fact, I was chary of making friends at all in there. I heard that you're never fully dressed without a smile, so I went out with nothing on but a smile. This brought me great popularity, lots of girlfriends, and this word of encouragement from my wife: "Dream on man."

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Something about having dimples when you are young- people keep asking to see them, and the state sort of stuck, but less so now.

 

[DaveC426913]

Something about having dimples when you are young- people keep asking to see them, and the state sort of stuck, but less so now.

Doesn't always work. I flashed my dimples once, at the beach. Caused a stampede of mothers snatching up their children. Almost landed me in jail.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Nice, Dave! I see I had been ambiguous, and to clarify, I was meaning the facial variety of dimples.

 

[Moonbear]

Whenever I see a baby or toddler, I always smile at it.

My usual reaction is to stick my tongue out at them or make funny faces. I don't know why, but they usually respond to it better than a smile.

 

[Loren Booda]

Kids are usually less jaded than their parents, but it depends on what stage they're at as to whether I act formal, silly or just friendly. I haven't tried the tongue greeting lately.

 

[Evo]

Whenever I see a baby or toddler, I always smile at it. I think that's a natural human response. Anyway it's one of the few times I smile. Like W.C. Fields, I start my day with a smile and get it over with.
'

That's too funny, I was quoting W C Fields to someone just this morning.

"Do you like children?" and Fields responds, "I do if they're properly cooked."

Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child— if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.

Got to love this guy.


Ok, I can just feel the people responding to this. It was W C Fields, not me.

 

[DaveC426913]

I haven't tried the tongue greeting lately.

Tongue-greeting...

You want to meet for coffee? :!)

 

[Loren Booda]

Nah, mine's been burned often enough.

 

[protonchain]

Only if they initiate the smile do I smile back.

I usually say hi or nod my head to bicyclists/joggers.

And if I'm driving and I see (for example) a nice corvette, I'll usually put a thumb up or nod.

At work, it's hi and how are you every 5 minutes, and I've made different greetings for different people.

I'll call one of my bosses Dr. Paul or Lord Paul. We have a Vietnamese person named Hao working there so I always ask her "Hao-how are you" or "How squared are you".

I tend to have the biased viewpoint that people in So-cal are fairly outgoing and will in the very least scrunch their lips or nod at you and at the very most will say "Beautiful day today huh?"