Smiling is Catchy

Good morning.  How do you like that moon?  It's not a picture that I took, but it is exactly what the moon looked like this morning.  Pretty fantastic, huh?  Actually, I've had a strange, but lovely morning.  I left my house and headed off to work and noticed that all the girls who were going to school looked at me and smiled.  Well, that's certainly a shocker!  I'm so used to being looked at like I was born on another planet.  Think I have to explain that comment.

I live in a predominantly Hasidic neighborhood...and not only do they rarely if ever, smile at you, the children stare with these looks on their faces which say, "That one must have just stepped off the spacecraft."  I'm serious, here my friends.  Picture this.  You are walking down the street, and there are children playing...and as you pass by, they stop whatever they are doing to stare at you with these "I don't believe what I am seeing faces".  I kid you not.  And this is why I don't spend much time in my backyard either, for they can be in the midst of the greatest, must fun game in the world, and let me open my door to hang my clothes on the line, and they drop everything to run to the fence to stare...like they have never seen someone hang clothes before.  And the little ones then start those never-ending 'hello's'.

Please, don't get me wrong.  I'm not prejudiced and am not putting down a religion.  To me, they are human beings just as I am, and I respect their beliefs...even though I may not agree with them.  So, all I ask for is respect.  Say 'thank you' when I hold the door for you  and teach your children that it is not polite to stare.  But, heck, here I am well off topic...again.


So, back to smiling. Now, the girls I am talking about were Hasidic teenage girls, so it was quite a shock to me that they smiled.  Then, I realized, I was smiling. Could it really be that they smiled back?  Has spring finally caught up with everyone?  For, I've smiled before and never gotten these results.   Perhaps the beauty of the day has caught up with everyone.  Too bad it couldn't be like this everyday.  A smile doesn't hurt anyone, and it is so much better than a frown.


Again, let me stress...this post was not meant to offend anyone.