Don't Smile at Me That Way

Waiting for the six train at Grand Central, I leaned over to see if it was on its way. It wasn't. I turned around to look at the people who were coming down the stairs. No one interesting. I started turning back to face the train's expected direction when I noticed a man looking at me. Six foot something good-looking man looking at me and smiling. I smiled a little back and turned my focus on the train that wasn't there.

I got bored. Thinking that perhaps checking out the people coming down the stairs would provide sufficient entertainment, I shifted my position to see the stairs. No need to look for entertainment there, though, because right next to me was Smiling Man. Smiling at me in this bizarre smiling way. His smile wasn't the kind that happens when you see something that makes you happy, it was the smile that you have after waiting 20 minutes for someone to take your picture--forced, stretched too wide, and trying to please. I smiled a little (as proper etiquette would demand of me) and looked away.

The force of his smile was too much for me to ignore and I felt the magnetic pull of his freakish smile pulling my attention back towards him. I looked at him. He shoved a smile at me and moved his head a bit so that he looked more like a little child looking for love than a grown man looking at a stranger.

I was thankful that when the train came we got on separate cars because I was beginning to feel a little weirded out.

The train shuffled its way out of Grand Central and into the dark tunnels of underground New York with me standing over the seats and hanging onto an overhead bar. There was a little boy playing with his bottle and its cover in the small space he had on the bench between his tiny shoes and father's thigh. There was a woman speaking so loudly to the man right next to her that you would think they were on opposite sides of the train...and deaf. There was a woman applying lipstick with a brush. And there was a man in the other car smiling a really freakish smile and staring straight into the car I was in and at me. Of course, at that point, I couldn't hold back my laughter.

Anyway, after I got off the train, I was walking to school and I passed this little old woman with shockingly pink lipstick and the largest, most forced-looking smile I had ever seen. And with that I conclude my theory that the city of Manhattan has been taken over by zombies one smiling freak at a time.