In honour of Kindness Week here in Ottawa I’d like to talk a bit about smiling. I am also issuing a challenge for myself (but I won’t be getting to that part until tomorrow).
One of the best pieces of parenting advice I’ve ever read is to smile at your children like you mean it. Give them a million watts when they walk in the door next time. Combine it with a warm embrace and see what happens. It makes a huge difference.
I try to remember this advice because (a) kids deserve to be smiled at and (b) I’m not a natural smiler. In fact, I’m somewhat self-conscious about it because I’m one of those people whose mouth makes a natural frown. And I think it’s only getting worse as I get older. It bothers me. One day I’m going to be an elderly lady, sitting by the pool in some hot tropical location and the servers aren’t going to want to come near me because I look like such an old grump. And I won’t get any fruity drinks in my golden years! See? Tragic.
I can have a totally blank and neutral expression on my face, feeling no emotion whatsoever, and the corners of my lips will be pointing downward. It’s something I worry about, and I blame my seventh grade French teacher.
(This is so embarrassing. I can’t believe I’m writing about this. But here I am! Tra la la!)
At the end of sixth grade the mother of my best friend asked me (and my parents) if I’d consider enrolling in a French Immersion program with her daughter. I liked the idea, so I went. It meant that we had to be bussed to a new school way out of our boundaries. It also meant that I wouldn’t really know anyone there, but I went anyway.
I probably am not alone in admitting that grade seven could be a pretty tough time for a kid, what with hormones and friends and school and parents and THE FUTURE all looming over everyone’s shoulders. It is definitely not a carefree time in one’s life. It wasn’t in mine. I remember standing around awkwardly on the first day, not knowing who to talk to or worse, even how to talk to someone.
Somehow I eventually recovered from the trauma of moving to a new school. I made a few close friends but somehow I never got the same groove back that I had in my old school.
You see, I was the smart girl. And I loved French. And all of my classes (even math, art, and science) were conducted in French. But for some reason it wasn’t cool to show enthusiasm for school. And I did. I loved school, and the other kids sniffed it out like hungry hound dogs.
Seventh grade was awkward enough for me. And THEN I had a teacher stop me in the halls and give me “helpful” life advice.
I liked my seventh grade French teacher, and Madame liked me too. Why wouldn’t she? I was a good kid and worked hard in her class.
One day she stopped me in the hall between classes. And in this busy corridor, that was positively throbbing with prepubescent energy, she said (in English):
“You NEVER smile Andrea! Why are you always FROWNING all the time?”
Maybe she even said I’d be pretty if I smiled, I’m not exactly sure what else. I was too stunned. But I do remember being confused, thinking that I wasn’t actually frowning. THIS IS MY NORMAL FACE, I thought, panicking. So what the hell IS WRONG WITH ME… ?
Her “helpful” comment came as a total shock. Here I was, thinking I was an average-looking kid (I’d never be so bold as to think I was PRETTY) and she tells me I always look like I’m frowning. WHAAAT?
From that point on I became conscious about the smile/non-smile position of my lips. Even today I feel like I have an inability to smile in a normal way … which makes photo taking a bit of a challenge, but that is another story. (How the Photographer Hates to Have Her Picture Taken.)
A helpful lesson here: Be careful what kind of advice you give to hormonal teenagers because it might be something that sticks with them forever and may result in long ranty blog posts and a possible need for therapy. AND that’s not kind at all!
(I’m laughing as I write this, but clearly it’s kind of true.)
Tomorrow I’ll be writing about a smile collection in honour of Kindness Week. So come back and see where this is all leading. And smiiiiile!
