Smiles

I went to a kids hockey game tonight, the son of some friends from college. I'm happy to report my friends were good, mellow hockey parents (yes, "mellow hockey parents" is not always an oxymoron). No surprise to me, then, that when their son came out after the game, a tough loss, he smiled and thanked me for coming to the game. A family who gets it.

Reminds me of an incident a few years ago when I was teaching, which I just had to turn into a high-horse poem:



Smile, Margaret


Smile, Margaret
The father commands in a whisper
From the back of the room,
Urging his eleven-year-old daughter
Who takes the stage with classmates to sing.
Not perform or entertain
But to sing simply.
As if she wouldn't.

And if I weren't ignorantly childless
I'd turn and say,
Talk is cheap, dad.
Beget smiles with yourself,
Not your pointed finger words.
Create joy rather than expect it.
Smiles are natural
Not conditioned reflexes like language.

Is there anything
As lonely
As impotent
As joyless
As to demand a smile?
Or as pathetic?
Remodel your life now.

Meat Puppets-Sam

The Mechanics Of Smiling

I've heard the commercial for days now, even though I have no idea what it's advertising. I always get distracted by the beginning, where the age-old claim is made yet again: it takes 17 muscles to smile. I'm not sure if the commercial goes on to say that it takes many more muscles to frown, because by then I'm off wondering about this muscles to smile claim. The web experts (Wiki, Snopes, The Straight Dope) all seem to agree the claim has long been made, with varying numbers of muscles, although only the venerable Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope consults a facial expert, who makes the astounding claim that frowning takes 11 muscles vs. smiling's 12! That's a full, genuine smile, by the way; a fake smile takes only 2, supposedly. Interesting reading, all of it, but I'm keeping straight-faced until I get some specific answers to some real smiling questions.

To me, the main question is one of exertion rather than quantity. And, as Cecil dips his toe into a bit, certainly there must be a helluva lot more different kinds of smiles than different words for snow even the most loquacious Eskimo can conjure. I mean, don't try to tell me the smile one muscles up in greeting a nutty co-worker can be equated to the smile one involuntary beams upon hearing a certain pro football coach has just been fired. Despite my recent blasting of numbers and numbers guys, I want some hard, empirical numbers involving g-force, torque, psi's--whatever they might be--to show me the technical difference between smiling politely at the winner when you've just been informed you're a mere runner-up and smiling proudly when you've just been informed on the playground that Jimmy said that Debbie told him that Susie is pretty sure that Barbara has a crush on you. Smiles are too precious and too diverse to be sloughed off with just one, probably specious number. Most of all, I want to know the toll of smiling through pain. Anybody got any answers?

The Hackensaw Boys-Smilin' Must Mean Something