Post #554136 by woofmutt on Wed, Sep 15, 2010 10:58 PM

Mr. Mike,

My comments weren't anti-smiling. They were anti-people thinking everyone should be smiling and if they're not something must be wrong.

For the most part I too am smiling all the time. The problem is that my smile is undetectable unless I force it into a clown-like expression which makes my jaws hurt.

I used to get chastised from mom when the school pics came home because I hadn't smiled. Highly annoying because I knew I was smiling when the picture was taken.

After years of these false accusations I decide to check my smile more closely. So I went into the bathroom and looking away from the mirror I smiled. I then looked in the mirror and realized my smile, which I knew was there, could not be detected.

This led to experimenting to determine how much I would have to contort my face to create a detectable smile and what that felt like as I would have no mirror to work with before the school photos. So I would look into the mirror, smile so it could be seen, note how it felt, relax my face and look away from the mirror, recreate the detectable smile face then look in the mirror to see if I had done it.

My first successful school pic smile happened in 5th grade. I was wearing a flannel shirt with prints of whitetails in forest settings. My smile was perfect. Unfortunately my eyes were half closed and I looked stoned out of my mind, an effect only compounded by my longish hair and the hippie bead and leather necklace I was wearing.

Of course mom failed to notice my fantastic smile, she just wanted to know why I had my eyes half closed. So that photo session taught me two valuable lessons:

1. How to smile for the camera so it shows.
2. No matter how much effort I would put into something mom (and dad) would find something to bitch about.