Infectious Smiles Infect Others!

I have said this many times before but I really do not like shopping.  And today was a shopping day.  I had a wedding present to buy for one nephew and a housewarming present to buy for another nephew and then there were supplies to be restocked.  When I got to the first store, I walked inside that there were very few carts left.  That told me right then and there that it was a zoo inside.  Yes indeed it was.


As always, I had my shopping list and I swerved in and out of the traffic of people picking up the things that were on the list.  It was an unusually long list and I needed to pack the cart carefully in order to fit everything into the cart.  I was quite frazzled by the time that I walked out of the store.


I went by the church next and did a bit of work there.  Then I headed over to the last store that I needed to go to.  The problem was that I needed to stop by the bank and I was still so frazzled that I drove right by the first branch where I normally go.


When I got to the grocery store, they were so full that I had to park two lanes over from where I normally parked.  I didn't have much to get at the grocery store; just a dozen things from the perimeter.  When I finished with the fresh vegetable section, I made my way through the crowd to the deli area.  I needed to pass by the organic section of the store.  This morning was below zero and although it was warming up outside, it was still very cold and trying hard to snow.  As I looked up, I saw a man curled up over a cup of coffee softly blowing on it to cool it off yet at the same time enjoying the immense warmth that permeated from the cup.  There was a roughness about the man that made me wonder if he was homeless and had learned that there was a free cup of coffee today for shoppers. He was dressed in layers and still wearing cloth or knitted gloves with some of the fingers out even though he was in the store.  He didn't look particularly dirty but there was something just different. Ironically, he was the only one with a cup of coffee in his hands.


Somewhere in my brain an emotion was triggered.  I couldn't help but smile.  Let me correct that by saying a SMILE so large that I couldn't wash it off my face appeared.  It was so sudden and unexpected that it took me by surprised and I think I maybe even giggled a bit.  The only one in the pack of people that saw me was the man with the coffee.  And out of his control, the infectious smile caught his face until his eyes twinkled back at me.


God bless you! and don't forget to smile even when you don't really feel like it.