Smile!

I had a great experience at my local Joann Fabrics today. Not only did I get a great deal but one woman at the counter remembered that I make costumes and the other woman (my favorite), chatted with me and remembered that I'm the kind of customer she can joke with. Which is great.
My local Joann's seems to collect two kinds of employees. Older, wisened Yankee ladies who know their stuff, are often single moms or divorcees and then there are youngish punk women who knit or sew goth costumes or who knows what. Make jewelry? But they are amazingly competent and funny.

As I left with my mother, bag with my treasure of linen-cotton blend under one arm, I couldn't help but smile. Not just a little shy smile but a huge, teeth showing smile of just pure glee. I almost tried to hide it, a flash of fear that someone would think I was up to no good or that my smile would in someway affect them. But then I double checked myself that no, no, I was okay to smile. I was okay to grin and that anyone who told me otherwise could stuff it. It felt good to smile like that.
The other week I was walking into Market Basket with Gideon when an older woman told me it was good to see someone smiling that day. I said thanks but was momentarily caught off guard.

You hear quite often how, apparently, a common catcall to women is "You'd be a whole lot prettier if you smiled!" or something to that effect. And how it's important to remember that people's emotions are their own and that telling someone they are ugly for not smiling as they simply walk down the street is pretty dumb.
But rarely do I see people just simply smile as they walk around in New England. Here I am though, doing it quite a lot.

I realized, in the days that followed, that I do smile a lot when I'm out and about. Mostly because Gideon is funny and that I feel it is better to engage people with a smile rather than a curt nod. But I think it also has something to do with who I am and how I do things. I should be a happier person. I am happiest when I am happy around other people, being that giddy, bouncing friend. I haven't been that in a while and I'd like to be that again. Who I am is not all dark sarcasm and pessimism. I am not a victim of circumstance. I can change the things around me and shape my own world.

I can smile for no reason. Or I can smile for lots of reasons. It doesn't matter to anyone else. I don't need a case of evidence to justify how I feel. I can just smile.

As I close, I am reminded of a favorite quote from "Much Ado about Nothing", in which Conrade speaks to Don John about his public behavior...

| Much Ado About Nothing | Act 1, Scene 3 

Enter DON JOHN and CONRADE

CONRADE
What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?

DON JOHN
There is no measure in the occasion that breeds;
therefore the sadness is without limit.

CONRADE
You should hear reason.

DON JOHN
And when I have heard it, what blessing brings it?

CONRADE
If not a present remedy, at least a patient
sufferance.

DON JOHN
I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest thou art,
born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral
medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide
what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile
at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait
for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and
tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and
claw no man in his humour.

CONRADE
Yea, but you must not make the full show of this
till you may do it without controlment. You have of
late stood out against your brother, and he hath
ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is
impossible you should take true root but by the
fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful
that you frame the season for your own harvest.

DON JOHN
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in
his grace, and it better fits my blood to be
disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to
be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied
but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with
a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I
have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my
mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do
my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and
seek not to alter me.

CONRADE
Can you make no use of your discontent?

DON JOHN
I make all use of it, for I use it only.

------

I want a shirt with the line "I am a plain-dealing villain" on it.