When a person is not smiling, it is quite understood that the person is either thinking something or listening or doing anything but not smiling. When I am not smiling people ask me, “What’s wrong?”I remember my first job at Capgemini when our senior Sashank would complain out loud, “ye ladki roti kyu rehti hai?” And since he would not give much opportunity to me to reply, I would just vent out at Rahul Ghosh, whose seat was right next to me, that I was not sad, I was just not smiling.
I think of myself as a jovial person but every time I cannot smile during a conversation because either I am thinking of something or I am just listening like I am gathering information, my face would just give up on me. Being void of any facial expressions, my train of thoughts would be interrupted by, “Did I say something offensive?”
I remember explaining to people that because my face is fat I need to put much more effort to smile the same length in comparison to a skinny person, hoping that they would buy this logic and not trouble me more when met with a weak smile by my face.
If you’ve seen even one episode of any stand-up comedy you’d know that when they make a joke they don’t laugh themselves, keeping a serious face while the audience laughs out loud. When I make a joke in such a manner, my close friends laugh while others just wonder if they have been told something offensive. When I’m sarcastic, people sometimes, when they don’t think I’m stupid and I meant what I said, laugh. But when I’m not sarcastic and I ask a question I genuinely want to know the answer of, people do assume that I’m being sarcastic.
Do you remember the last time you’re exhausted when you’re about to call it a day after hours of tiresome traveling or working and all you need is to lie down and sleep? I can’t remember the last time I was so exhausted and sweating but not asked if I had a bad day, because every time I have to wave my good-byes after going on a trip together people ask me either via a text message or in person whether I was upset with something.People often ask me why my candid photos on Facebook or Instagram are such that my face isn’t facing the camera while I look at somewhere distant. This is because those of my candid photos where I am reading or looking at the camera, I look as if I am going to kill someone.
Have you ever just walked into a party where everyone is having fun but you just walked in and are just looking for a friend or everyone’s looking at their cellphones and so are you? In such a scenario, people would ask me, “Why are you so judgmental?” and leave me wondering if that’s how my face looked to them.
The saddest part of this story is that my face still hasn’t learnt. It didn’t learn when I was a pampered kid and my father would sometimes wonder why I turned out this way that I had to cry to get the things I want while I concluded that because I sulked so much my face turned permanently sulking. And even after years of being told to smile or being asked why I am sad, my face seems to still have not learned a thing.
I write this post because I find these humorous memes on the internet and I do not wish to laugh alone. I write this post in the hope that someone would comment saying they have this problem too. I do not know many people who have this problem because those who probably have this issue wouldn’t be approached by me and vice versa for mostly the same reason. -_-
