This cartoon reminds me of Looney saying the Chinese have a rich vocabulary for different kinds of smiles. I wonder what they would call Earl’s in the cartoon above. Or what they would call the father’s smile in this cartoon:
Are you as much of a sucker for a genuine smile as I am? How would you react to the smiles in these two cartoons? I would think Earl’s was coerced… and the father’s smile seems too intrusive. Even if the father isn’t faking his cheerfulness, trying to talk his son into feeling the same way has to be annoying. Have you ever been in a situation like that? Either as the cheerful person or the person being annoyed? Do you agree with the Chinese that there are many kinds of smiles?
I was concentrating on the dance at Scottish dance & as I danced by, Frieda sitting on the sidelines, said “SMILE!”.
It’s been a long time & she’s died, but now I know what I’d have liked to have said. “Frieda, I’ve known you for 25 years & I have NEVER seen you smile.”
Some people genuinely smile at you & when you picture them, you see them smiling. Others you can’t imagine what their smile would look like.
bikehikebabe,
Your comment reminded me of a math professor I had in college. He was always very serious and we speculated that if he ever smiled his face would crack. Then I crossed paths with him on campus once and he gave me a huge smile. I was so startled I don’t know if I reciprocated. It obviously made an impression on me!
there can be problems with smiles and not smiling…apparently if I am trying to look serious without smiling…I’m asked “why are so sad, nothing can be that bad?”
I can’t be smiling all the time…it ain’t natural & NO I’M not neccesarily sad when I’m not SMILING
(I’m not smiling at the moment because a photocopied reading that I want to find, because I put notes in the columns is “lost in action” and that means I have heavy load of reading to do tomorrow from a newly printed copy!…bummer! hopefully some of the previous ‘reading-memory’ will shoot up into the part of my brain that holds ‘memory’)
.-= Cathy in NZ´s last blog ..Classes finished but still 1000s of words to GO! =-.
Cathy,
Good luck! I certainly do not smile when other people are upset about something.
I too am a big sucker for smiles and yes, there are many types of smiles. A mother’s smile when she sees her child is very different from the one that she gives her husband for instance! The one that I give my son will be different from the one that I give my father and so on and so forth.
.-= Rummuser´s last blog ..Who would you like to meet from past history? =-.
Those made me laugh. I don’t know what the Chinese would call the first smile, but I am generally one whose heart softens when I see a smile. The second cartoon is the scarier one since the smile is obviously a mask. There was an example of this from my earlier days in the cubicle wars who was known as the smiling tiger.
.-= Looney´s last blog .. =-.
Looney,
For me the second one seems more empty-headed than scary… there doesn’t seem to be much person behind the cheerful face and smile. Thanks for telling me about the Chinese.