Smile for me

I’ve decided that every office should have a man with a good smile. They are just so nice to look at you understand. They don’t have to be single (in fact it helps if they aren’t because then you can ogle in safety). They just have to be… easy on the eye. Makes even the hardest day go that little better.

I’ve also realised that a good smile on a guy is important to me. More important than I gave credit to before. Give me the most ‘handsome’ man in the world and if he doesn’t have a good smile, he does nothing for me.

J had a real sweet smile. I remember this one picture from the start of our relationship – he just had the sweetest smile, seeing it tipped me over the edge from quite liking to really liking.

shanks had a great smile on him too, though his was more on the lines of a cheeky grin – gave the clue to his personality. It wasn’t the kind of smile you relied on to bring you cups of tea and hold your hair back when you’re feeling sick. It was the kind of smile that took you out dancing and didn’t bring you home till the sun was just starting to come up.

And the CC had this wonderful slow, secret smile that started at the corner of his mouth and ended lighting up his entire face. Sometimes I’d just turn around and catch his smile starting as he was looking at me. I was never totally sure what prompted it, but I knew it was a good smile without an ounce of malice behind it. Made my knees go wibbly and my stomach do backflips to see it.

It’s the way a smile can make a fairly average face suddenly full of grace. First time I met Jeff, nearly two years back, he didn’t make much of an impression on me. He kept to himself, didn’t mingle with the rest of us, which was fine – some people don’t like to mix. He just didn’t register on my radar beyond being a fellow course-mate to say ‘hi’ to whilst waiting for class to start. Then one day he decided to join us in the courtyard for a cup of tea between seminars. Someone told a joke and *boom* his face changed, he changed. He was no longer a nonentity to me – he was a guy with a damn cute smile that made me want to know him better. It was goofy. It was thoughtful. It was generous. It was… Jeff.

Matt is another person who had a smile I’d go a long way to see again. Everyone loved Matt. It was impossible not to with his smile.

I used to laugh when I read romance novels where the heroine can tell everything about the hero from his smile. I still do laugh. It is unrealistic – for me at least facial clues are tricky. I hate scenes in movies where there’s lots of ‘eye-acting’ because I know I’m missing things, not getting the full picture. If someone tries to send ‘messages’ with their eyes at me, I fluff it. So much of it is intuition, knowing a person really well, and guessing. How am I to know that the signals I’m getting from someone’s expression are the signals they are trying to send?

I don’t.

But something in me is rigged to respond to smiles. Some smiles don’t work on me. There’s nothing wrong with them, but sometimes it just doesn’t flip the switch to make me let down my defences. It’s a chemistry thing I guess. I might still like you, talk to you, call you friend, but that extra zing will be missing. I can even think of one or two people whose smiles mildly repel me.

Most often though, it will be like with Jeff: I won’t have a preference either way, then someone will smile and it opens my heart. I think his smile is one of the reasons I think David Tennant is such a great Dr Who. A fairly unassuming face. Ordinary even. Then he smiles and… yup. That’s a good smile he’s got going on. If you can get your hands on a copy of the DVD, I do recommend watching Casanova (the Russell T. Davies BBC adaptation, not the Heath Ledger film).

What defines a good smile? I couldn’t say. I just know it when I see it.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad we’ve got our very own Dr Who in the office – I just caught the tail end of his smile today and it made me glad to be at work. I already had him pegged as a decent chap, now I know he is.

People say I have a good smile. I don’t know – it’s just my smile, I’ve always had it. But if it is a good smile? I’m glad. I can’t be the only one out there rigged to like smiles.

8 thoughts on “Smile for me

  1. Smiles that can be seen in the eyes are good ones for me. You know that sparkle type one – my husband has one and it’s one of the things I fell for him about.

  2. I have to admit, I’m a real sucker for a cute smile as well. I like to think that I can tell a lot about a person simply by their smile.

  3. For those destined to fall into the ‘more than friends’ category, there are of course a few other attributes that a girl likes to see in a man… Personally I have this weird kink towards climbers and those with good collarbones (I did say it was weird). The one and only time I ever really appreciated Tom Cruise was at the start of M:I2 when he’s doing that rock climbing bit…

    But regardless of final intentions, smiles do rate high on my unconscious list of things I look for in ‘nice’ people who I want to spend more time with.

    Oops on the song Spooky. Sorry. And yay! On finally revealing your digital presence to the world 😀

  4. I like lopsided smiles. Don’t know why because generally I prefer symmetry (those 1 strap dresses drive me crazy), but when a guy has a slighty lopsided smile I go all gooey.

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