Turkish delights and birthday cake

Apart from this ' :-) ' how do you write a grin?

Smiles come in all shapes, sizes and motivations. There's the barely there, I mustn't smile, demur, hinted-at smile. The embarrassed I-have-no-idea-why-I'm-smiling-but-I-am-and-I-can't-stop smile. The forced I-should-be-smiling-because-everyone-else-finds-this-funny-even-if-I-don't smile. The I love you smile between adults which is very different from the I-would-starve/cut-off-my-arm/go-without-chocolate-for-the-rest-o-my-life-if-only-I-could-see-your-smile-every-day-and-keep-you-safe-for-ever smile between a mother and her child. Then there's the I'm happy, just simply, overwhelmingly happy smile sometimes accompanied by a humm-ful tune. Proper smiles involve your eyes. Sad, forced and embarrassed smiles do not.

So what about grins. Are they perhaps just very big smiles?

Is a grin a smile on a grand scale? The Sydney Opera House of smiles. A smile as deep in feeling as the Grand Canyon and as wide as any ocean. It radiates, infects and consumes. And spreads faster than fire, if whipped up by laughter. You could experiment with this in an open crowded space - stand and grin and start to laugh - you might feel like a wally-banana (Littlest's latest expression) but you'll quickly get noticed and make others laugh. And quite probably - as long as you're not arrested - have a jolly time.

It's perhaps obvious, but different things make different people smile. Grinning is no exception. Your emotional state and physical well-being have a role to play too. Recovering from an interview rejection or suffering from a bout of flu are not scenarios usually associated with grinning - unless a friend discloses that the job was not right for you, for lots of reasons, including that after 3 months they would ask you to go to China and you don't speak Chinese and you don't like rice and then the same friend spends the next five minutes making elephant noises with your packet of paper hankies.

I grin fairly frequently. As witnessed by all the lines on my face - I think they're called smile lines. Okay, technically they're age lines but I call them smile lines. Yesterday, I smiled as I shared a Turkish feast from a local Take-Away restaurant. I smiled a slightly inebriated smile as we shared fizz, then wine, then heavenly, orange muscat. I smiled at one of the best cakes I have ever eaten. And scoring my smile lines a little deeper, I grinned, as nine of the loveliest people in my world stood, waved their arms in the air and hollered happy birthday. At me.

Thank you.

Comments

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