baserinstincts

Smile!

I know I run the risk of sounding like an angry black woman here.

But this is something that’s bothered me for ages.

An incident this morning on the train (ah yes, again with the lovely MTA) kicked off the whole thing.

So it’s about 4ish. I’m sitting and waiting for my train to
come. A gentleman comes along after awhile and he sits next to me.

I don’t look up but I can see out of my peripheral that he looks normal
enough.

He says good morning.

I mutter a barely audible good morning in reply.

He turns his head, his whole body even, toward me and, clearly
catching an attitude, repeats in a much louder voice, “I SAID good morning.”

I then, instantly annoyed, turn my head and torso toward him, look at him
dead on and said in the best angry black woman voice I can muster at 4
something in the fucking morning, “I SAID good morning as well.”

He retorts, “OK,that’s more like it.”

What the fuck?!?!

I mean if he was trying to get laid he just lost any slim chance he had to begin with.

I’m sure many other females have had this experience.

You’re having a not-so-bright-and-shiny day.

And it shows.

All over your face.

You walk by some man, who seems to think your sole existence on earth is to
smile at him as you go by and he says to you, “Smile.”

Am I the only one who finds this intensely annoying?

If I felt like smiling, then I’d smile.

I smile quite a lot in fact and all who know me can attest that I am generally a jovial sort of chick.

But I have my days, as anyone else does.

Give me that.

If I want to walk around with a screw face on well then that’s damn well my prerogative isn’t it?

If I don’t particularly want to engage in conversation with a complete stranger on the New York City subway at 4 in the morning, well you can understand that can’t you?

The thing that makes me bristle the most about this is that a man would never, ever say “Smile” to another man.

Another man can be angry, and men (and women) will just leave him be.

But I’m a woman, and so I must smile.

Some of y’all take this Adam’s rib business a bit too literally.

Woman is not an “extension of the man”. She’s an individual in her own right.

Meaning, if I don’t know you, especially if I don’t know you, I don’t owe you shit.

Not even a fucking smile.