Even when I'm in a bad mood? Yesterday I went to the Kroger thirty miles away (for the things like house brand ice cream that I can't get locally) and was zooming through as fast as I could so I could leave before the combination of crappy music and lots of televisions tuned to a football game made me kick someone, and people kept
smiling at me. Only one of them was an employee, so it wasn't a "smile at cross customers" policy. I do go around smiling most of the time, and people will smile back, but I wasn't smiling then. (Grrr--if only I could mail-order ice cream and never have to set foot in the place again! I fantasize about climbing up the walls and ripping the speakers out of the ceiling.)
I remember the first time I was in Chicago. I was walking around (smiling, of course) and I kept getting these looks from people--"She's weird! Is she dangerous?"--and after a while I realized I was the only one smiling. Everybody else was walking around as expressionless as they could get. It was the same when I went back ten years later. It must be a Chicago thing, not a Northern thing, because I didn't get the same reaction in Boston or New York or Philadelphia, even though (after Chicago I was observing) not very many people on the street smiled.
Humans are strange.
Maybe it is 'cause you are so CUTE!
ReplyDeleteDaryl
(what kind of ice cream is this you drive that for for??)
Humans ARE strange! Especially the ones who inhabit the cities.
ReplyDeleteMy former boss's husband (who grew up on a farm in southern Illinois) had many funny stories about his recent co-workers who had moved out of the city. I told him my observations led me to believe that country people adapt to the city better than city people adapt to the country, and he agreed that we might be biased, but he thought so too.
ReplyDelete(Daryl, it's Kroger's house brand ice cream. I'm addicted to it. Sometimes I try other brands, and they're pretty good, but something is missing. I also prefer their version of Kellogg's Nutrigrain bars--not only cheaper but better tasting! But I don't have to go quite that far to get to Kroger. There's one only twenty miles from here. The thirty-mile-plus one is near my father's house (not sold yet, of course, not even empty yet) and his post office box, so I have to go that far anyway.)
Really bad flaky internet today.