The Boy With the Crooked Smile

I asked him to stay after class for a moment. I had had it with his disrespect. While the classroom emptied, he sat in his desk, warily. As I began my one-sided “talk,” my mind raced ahead to gather the long list of his shortcomings and my short list of expectations, focusing on the gap inbetween. I found myself, beetle browed, jut jawed, stern postured, finger in mid-point, with nothing to say.

I thought he thought I was stupid, but I couldn’t remember even so much as a mutter from him expressing that. I thought he was disrespectful to me, but why, how? It came to me. It was his smirk.

I would say something to pull a laugh from the class and he would smirk.

I would smile, say good morning to the class, and he would smirk.

He didn’t slouch back in his chair, broadcasting disdain with every slow move. He didn’t hump over his desk, head-down, asleep, unresponsive and slack; until a touch or a shake furied every body muscle, pent-up, poised to explode as he slowly rose and glared, confronting the toucher or shaker. He didn’t chatter endlessly heedless of my calls for his attention.

He just sat up in his desk, straight-backed from his butt to his brainpan, and smirked.

I looked at him, paused, and put my pointed finger away. I couldn’t read a riot act to a kid for smirking.

His brows went up, he looked me in the eyes, briefly, then down and side to side. “What,” he said.

I thought a while. He continued in the silence, “What . . . what! Am I in trouble? I didn’t do any. . .”

I cut him off. “Do you ever find yourself in a situation where a teacher, a coach, or—I don’t know—anyone who’s an authority figure, suddenly goes off on you for no good reason? Like they’re mad at you for something you did, but you don’t know what, and they never tell you. Maybe they use the phrase ‘bad attitude.’”

He left me for a minute, staring straight ahead, eyes focused on something a long ways off, beyond the whiteboard ten feet in front of him. His answer seemed to grow from that distance, like someone hollering out a car window at you as they come down the street.

“Yeah.” His inflection got louder as the pitch went up, a questioned surprise. And suddenly he was back from the distance, looking straight at me, cautiously, distrustfully.

“Come here,” I said, leading him to the mirror on the wall in the corner of the classroom.

“What?” he said as he reluctantly followed to the mirror.

I hesitated, “I don’t really know how to ask this any way but bluntly, but have you ever had a serious head injury or something?”

He pulled back, looked directly at me. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “Why?”

“Because you have a one-sided smile. Look . . . smile in the mirror.”

“What are you . . . no. Can I just go?” He turned to leave.

“Just look in the mirror, smile, tell me what you see, and then you can go,” I pleaded, feeling a little foolish. “You’ve never had a stroke or anything like that have you?”

He looked in the mirror and made his lopsided smile. “The smirk,” I thought, “His normal smile is a one-sided smirk.”

I said, “There, you see how that corner of your mouth goes up when you smile and the other doesn’t move at all? Why do you do that?”

He smiled at himself in the mirror again. “I don’t know . . . habit.”

“Can you smile with both corners of your mouth going up?” He looked in the mirror, looked at me, looked in the mirror again and pulled both corners up, independent of each other at first, but finally together in an awkward, leering smile.

“Like this?” He said through his open mouth, rolling his eyes over to look at me.

“See, you can do it.” I startled him with my enthusiasm.

“This is just too weird.” He was heading for the door again.

“Wait, wait.” I stopped him. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to tell you how you have to smile. You can smile with a frown if you want, but you need to know something.”

“Okay, what?” he said.

“There is something about the one-sidedness of your smile that leads me to think you think I’m an idiot. Your natural smile is a sarcastic looking smirk!” He tilted his head slightly, arching an eyebrow at me, about to speak. “Don’t say it; I think I know what you’re going to say.” I held up my hand to stop him. “Several times this year I’ve found myself irritated at you for no good reason that I can tell.”

I continued. “Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m too insecure or something, but I bet I’m not the only person who interprets your smile that way. Just consider the possibility you may be sending negative messages you don’t intend to people with that smile.”

He looked at me, looked in the mirror, and looked at me again. He wasn’t smiling. I plunged on, feeling I had gone too far to stop now. “How about you try a little experiment for me?”

“What?” he said.

“Every time you laugh or smile try to make yourself use both corners of your mouth and see if it makes any difference in how people react to you.”

He went back to the mirror and again launched both corners of his mouth upward into a smile; again, they came up alternately, one at a time at first. He looked at his awkward, leering face, gave his head a little shake, and again spoke to me through the open-mouthed smile. “Looks stupid.”

“Not so bad as you think, maybe. You’re just not use to it.” I offered.

He shook his head again, let his smile collapse, and headed out the door. “This is nuts.”

I just let him go.

After that day, he started what I chose to interpret as a gentle tease. Every time I saw him in the halls, greeted him as he entered the classroom, or he laughed at one of my jokes, he would pause for a fraction of a second, launch both corners of his mouth into that goofy, leering smile, and present his face to me, so I was sure to notice. Greeting me in the hallways he would add, “Hello Mr. White,” through the teeth of his frozen open-mouthed smile.

Because of his teasing, I didn’t ask him about the experiment I had proposed until the very end of the year. That day I met him coming down the hall. He grinned his goofy grin and greeted me.

I stopped him and said, “I have to know. Have you been experimenting with your smile on anyone but me?”

He grinned his goofy grin again and nodded.

“Can you tell if it makes any difference in how people react?”

He left me again for a minute, staring straight ahead, eyes focused on something a long ways off, down the hall maybe, but I didn’t turn to look. Again, his answer seemed to come from that distant place.

“Yeah.” Same inflection, same look of surprise on his face, but with less confusion and more humor. With that word, he was suddenly and once again back from the distance.

He gave me a perfectly natural, symmetrical smile and went on down the hall.