A Stranger's Smile

I was driving around today in the rain, my mind in total chaos as I often find it to be when I have a minute to myself. I was thinking about my nana, an issue that has me concerned at work, my kids who seem to be needing more of me than I have to give lately and was a little down when I came to the end of a side street having to make a right hand turn onto a busy street. There was a pedestrian coming down the sidewalk and seeing the traffic I had to pull into, figured I would come to a stop before the sidewalk so he had plenty of room to cross in front of me.

This guy, having all the room he needed and plenty of time to cross decided to wait on the corner for me to make my turn. I gave him the wave to acknowledge that I see him there and to tell him to cross as it was 3:30 and the school traffic down this street would leave me sitting a few minutes at the corner before I got the chance to pull into my lane. He simply smiled and waved me on.

We did the awkward, “No, you go” “No, you go” thing a few times over and he just sat there smiling as he waved me on so I edged forward. It was the funniest thing. I had expected him to just walk around my van after I pulled up but he just stood there smiling at me. I’d smile back, check out the traffic, see that I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, then look back at him. And he just smiled. We did this for a good 3 or 4 minutes before I got the chance to pull away. I would have been happy to sit there an hour, smiling back and forth. That smile made my day. We truly need more people in this world to smile. Not just to smile because they got a promotion, or smile because it’s pay day or smile because they got something they wanted but to smile for no reason at all.

I realized that lately, I don’t smile enough. I have put so much pressure on myself, let the world’s trouble lie on my shoulders and have chosen to let that get me down when I could be smiling, making someone else’s day as this guy had made mine. It was no effort on his part and he likely has no idea that he turned my day around but that is the most beautiful part of it all. It was just a smile….that made me smile.