The Miserly Smile

Most English dread passing someone on a quiet road or in a park. It seems we have come up with a solution, not quite a smile but some tight arsed acknowledgment that involves a momentary tightening of the lip and a minute nod of the head. 

What is it’s meaning? What does it save us from, this mean little mannerism? 

The other person, the stranger passing, can now know he has been seen, but has it made either the giver or the receiver happier? The giver, with this terrible offering, feels, well I am assuming here, having never tried this pseudo greeting but judging by the unease of the facial grimace, a kind of relief in it being over, ‘there we are, stranger greeted, that will do, can’t say I’m rude, I didn’t ignore him.' So this meagre type of acknowledgment comes down to duty. I did my duty, I recognised there was another human close by and I was decent enough to acknowledge this. I could have looked down as I passed, I could have crossed over, but no, I pursed my lips into a straight line, pushing my bottom lip up, so making my mouth turn down at either side and at the same time moved the head down three or four centimetres in a poor man’s nod; a bit like giving brown money to the homeless. 

And what of the receiver? How are they to greet this poverty stricken act of reaching out? It can be worse if the receiver has said a, ‘hello’ or a friendly, ‘good morning.' To have offered a verbal greeting and in return get the misers nod feels like a kick up the arse, wondering were you in some way being intrusive or worse a pushy, possibly lonely, person. So the miser’s nod can land as an attack. 

Maybe only a withholding person would use this form of address, if you can call it that. I think it belongs in the stable with such expressions as: ‘That wouldn’t be my choice but of course its up to you.’ What the fuck does that mean? I could include the: ‘bear with me’s’ but they are so beleaguered and over used they now reduced to phone punctuation, just letting you know I have a screen in front of me and I cannot talk and use it at the same time, so now it will go quiet for a bit. The ‘bearing with’ is a pause, its hollow and empty and possibly irritating but it does not seek to belittle. 

‘That wouldn’t be my choice,' is a nasty little way of starting a sentence. It instantly alienates, seeking to get the upper ground, but also to undermine; a double pronger. By the time you get to ‘of course it’s up to you,' which is what, apart from meaningless garbage of unfelt sentiment, a waste of words that slab forth coated in fair mindedness.  How mature they are, they don’t agree with you but as a liberal nice human,  they will remind you, how, it is, after all, your choice. And the unsaid, like the nod, is not at all the intention, the intention is a passive off loading of unexpressed judgment. 

Like the driver that beckons the pedestrian across the road, he doesn’t offer his palm up as he might if he were standing without his car around him. Out of the car he may mange the grace of a subtle step back, a smile and even the, ‘after you’ but in the car the ghastly man will do a quick chopping action with his hand, a sort of hand signal version of ‘come on, come on, don’t take all fucking day.’ Women too, they do it, usually from high up cars. They rush you along with a quivering fine fingered gesture, unimaginably rude face to face but up there, they rationalise that they are being decent, letting their fellow man ‘in’ before them, don’t ask me for grace as well, isn’t it enough that I allow it. I  have segweyed into another dynamic, these horrid hand signals don’t seek to put down the pedestrian, the fact that they do is an inadvertent by product, what the driver is actually suffering from is temporary loss of humanity bolstered by the car, he has become a lower human, like a beast in the jungle, he has to fight the temptation to just  keep going and kill you. From his perspective this reigning in of instinct is laudable. So, although the hand signal does demean it is not it’s first motive. What I am trying to focus on is the conveyor belt of attacks, but it is interesting how a lot of low communication is justified by decency.

The passive aggression of jumping into a full lift and triggering the doors to reopen, the wincey little smile that is felt by this greedy, self centred, person as apology enough. Are we to feel apologised to, or are we left with the rage? A mock cringe and silly smile only suggest, ‘don’t hit me,’ we were not thinking of hitting you, merely of hating you, had you said, ‘God, sorry, how selfish of me,’ the hatred would have dissipated, yes you were bad but you know you were bad, justice.

Back to that miserly smile, these people would be the same people that when  colliding with another human will wait for the other person to issue the knee jerk response of an 'Oh sorry' and they in turn will respond with: 'thats all right'.
Not only does that not complete the transaction between two humans bumping into to each other, it forces the ‘oh sorry' person into being the one who bumped, the bad one. The, ‘that’s all right,' person will have assumed the position of wronged one, and in keeping with this outlook will not seem in the least ‘all right’  instead he will utter these words as further rebuke but again housed in polite nothingness.

It is this lack of generosity that makes life so barren. At the checkout I offered a lady with one thing in her basket to go before me. She was old, I know from my mum how old people hate to stand, so I offer her my place, and the young mum in front of me busy ignoring her child and reading a paper she has placed over her shopping on the checkout (This in itself was sort of bad, not too sure how but it got to me-possibly the way in which the child seemed so utterly neglected, standing there with no mother, huge rucksack full of homework, ridiculous school uniform advertising the independent status, tired, ignored and alone.) The young mother glanced round when she heard me make this offer, since I had said it loud enough for her to also offer up her place, her eyes scanned the situation quickly, giving up a place in the queue, pretend not to notice? Or was she to be forced into being human? Tough choice for her, she was happy to duck out of parenting, rather read a free sheet, was she really about to give away two minutes to a stranger, not bloody likely. She was pretty sure no one had seen her furtive little glance, she turned her back, signalling ‘nothing doing.’ The old lady felt self conscious, she tried to get back behind me saying it didn’t matter. How odd that this display of hideousness should result in the older lady feeling that she was the bad one. 

I once smashed into a bus. I crashed and smashed off the drivers mirror, my fault, in his lane, no two ways about it. There was an eye stinging back story to this, where I had just come from, what I had found out, but still in that moment, I was utterly to blame. I had my three year old son with me, he was scared and crying. I got out and walked around to the driver who had left his cabin. He put his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the eye’s and said, ‘it’s all right don’t worry, you didn’t see me did you.’ Next he turned to the car, took in my son and asked me where I was off to, to see Jungle Book at the pictures I said. He replied that it would be a good thing to do after such a shock and that I shouldn’t give it another thought, no he did not want my details, he’d think of something to tell the garage. 

At that time in my life I would have been floored by an increase in my insurance, but even more than that, how badly I felt to have crashed with my baby in the car, and this stranger came forward and loved me and I walked away as though I was a good mother but a stressed one and I had been seen as that. It was all right I should continue on to Jungle Book. I did, and it was better than if I hadn’t collided with the bus. The man eclipsed what had gone on that day before the crash, he wiped it out with his kindness. 

Tiny, tiny acts of love have immeasurable returns. If you smile at a baby, the baby smiles back, well mostly. The smile you get back is always worth ten of the smile you gave, they give it for free, they do not hesitate or limit the smile they smile for as long or as short as they feel.  Have I stumbled into, ‘A smile costs nothing,’ oh dear.

I have to say when I first heard a phone operator suggesting I ‘bear with him’ I felt drawn into the cause. I had a picture of him standing on a rowing boat, bearing down on his oar and he was asking me to help, that if we both pushed together we could cast off from the muddy bank and start out on our journey, A coming together.  I am not sure why that image, the bearing I think, like bearing down in childbirth, an old fashioned pursuit, hence being imbued with something decent. Like the first time the check-out lady in Waitrose apologised for the wait. I felt she was offering kinship, a moment of empathy, even a small collusion between me and her against the slow oaf she’d just dealt with, the only attack in either of these expressions is the moment you realise it’s what they say. The Waitrose check-out ladies are told to say it. Corporate friendship.

‘Excuse me,' and other bits of elbowing commentary has become the city speak for fuck off. We are the drain rats who would go for the throat if it was get awayable with. As it is we have our electronic devices and our debased manners to shield us from unscheduled and unwelcome confrontations from the outside.