I didn't smile till I was 17

That's obviously a lie (see baby picture), but smiling is now a habit I formed at 17. I never thought I was frowning, or scowling or something, but my face as relaxed looked... unhappy? intimidating? pissed? stoic? I'm not sure. People were always telling me to smile. It's still a phrase that pisses me off, with the ineffective comeback of "you fucking smile".

Eventually I realized that if I was going ot be fitting into this world, this 'christian, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy' (thanks bell hooks) world that we all live in, I was going to have to smile.

And let me tell you, it works. People still say stupid shit to me, you can't really help that, I suppose I say stupid shit to people as well, but fucking smiling puts people at such ease. Even when you are insulting them.

Now, is this some sort of betrayal? Am I abusing/using my status as 'female' and 'pretty' by manipulating people? Oftentimes I'm seen as being flirty when I'm, just being friendly. Eye contact and a smile are now one of my ways of acknowledging people, this does not mean I want to jumps your bones, or lady wood.

I guess smiling is just a societally accepted and expected mannerism for women to have. I was treated as strange without this mannerism, I adopted it and became more acceptable. Is this a betrayal of myself? Of other non-smiley women? Is this the same type of betrayal as my calling myself 'Jane' and not dealing with the strange reception of my legal name?

What other ways have I changed myself to make myself more socially acceptable? We all do it, we need to fit in and make everything work, 'get 'er done' and all. I just seem to be more acutely aware of what parts of myself I seem to be giving up in order to fit into this crappy christian, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society that we all live in.

It's not acceptable to be sad, emotional at all really, to be late, to daydream, to be alone, to not want money, to not want objects, to not want status, to stand out in unaccepted ways; if you must be different be quiet about it. the specifics of acceptability vary through different communities with the mainstream American one not accepting variations in gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, outside of their proscribed boxes. One way of combating this is to keep pushing at the edges of the boxes and expanding them. The box for black people was expanded to include athletic ability, then musical ability, orating ability, and soon political ability, but the boxes don't seem to be disappearing. The box for gay people was expanded through the show "Queer Eye" and other TV shows, it's been said our brains need these boxes to make sense of informational input. And so, in order to be accepted you have to fit into whatever box people generally see you as fitting into.

Therefore, here I am at 25 having a bad day at a job I was hired for because of my smileyness. what effect does it have on my psyche to now be smiling when I was to glare at all the people? I don't even want to read the study on airline stewardess (that's not the article I was thinking of, it was all I could find quickly, like I said I don't think I want to read it right now).

But ok, whatever, if everyone else it doing it I might as well hop on in, kind of like a zombie attack, it's just so much easier to be one of them than to constantly battle the hordes of the undead. After all, once you are one of them they no longer try to eat your brains.

Wind

I wrote this in the 7th grade and sent a copy to my grandfather. My grandmother just found it and sent it back to me. The pages were out of order,the last page is missing, but I don't think she noticed. It's a very existential or some shit, story, I don't think they noticed that either.

Carefully picking her way through the rubble of the destroyed housse Jane neared a distraught family already surrounded by other reporters. Jane elbowed her way through tand started scribbling notes on her note pad. The father was speaking at the moment, the mother was staring in shock at the rubble that used to be their house. The two young girls were looking around at the police cars, fire engines and ambulances wailing by.
"We came back from our camping trip just in time to see it," the man was saying. "The tree just swayed and toppled over, we were lucky we weren't in there." Here his gaze flicked tot he left and Jane followed it. Lifeless and twitching bodies were being carried out of the rubble on strechers to ambulances.
Jane stepped back out of the crowd of reporters and sought out the chief of police.
"Does anyone know why the tree fell?" Jane asked, scribbling some notes.
He looked up and sighed. "This is it: It wasn't cut, the roots are right there. The ground was soggy from all the rain we've been getting lately, and the roots weren't very deep. And the wind the wind had been buffeting it, one last shove and it was over," the chief looked up and continued. "Four houses and one room were crushed."
Jane stopped scribbling notes for a moment. "What does 'And one room' mean?"
"Well, look at this," the chief made his way over to the base of the tree where the roots were sticking up in the air. "The tree fell at an angle, crushing everything. But this house," he points to a house that had only one back room crushed by the tree. "By the time the tree got to that house, it only got the den."
"Lucky guy huh?"
The chief shook his head. "He was in there, talking on the phone."
"And this house," Jane motioned to a house where only the front was still standing. "Was that a families house?"
Shakes his head. "Nope, a single guy," he said referring to his notes. "I think he's engaged."
"He wasn't there?"
"He was answering the door, some salesman," the chief looked around. "I'd better get back to work."
Jane looked up from her notes and at her surroundings. Had the tree fallen backwards, Jane noticed, it would've fallen on the garage and the extensive backyard. Forward and it would have gotten the house across the street. Had it fallen the other way... here Jane looked behind her at the orderly row of houses stretching away from the rubble and chaos the fallen tree had created.
Jane shivered and pulled her coat closer around her as a wisp of cold wind passed by. She finished the rest of questioning quickly, then hurried to her motorcycle. She threw her notes into the trunk and hopped on. The wind

yeah, it ends there. pretty heinous huh? I couldn't help myself and fixed a bit of the spelling and grammar, I kept in most of the crap. I just couldn't stand seeing the word 'cheif' misspelled constantly. It's all handwritten on that blue lines notebook paper. Neither my spelling nor my writing talent has improved much in the last 10 odd years. a little depressing actually.