The Cynic Express(ed) 1.02: The Unsmiling Cynic

     It was a dark Thursday morning, and I wanted to be elsewhere than the gas station on the western edge of Columbia at five minutes to five. I had seven minutes before gone in to kiss the woman I love goodbye and she had asked me in a dream-laden voice if I had to leave her. I had and was headed eastward to a pre-ordained uneventful day in the doldrums of the printing industry. I stopped at the little Shell on Providence, as usual, ready to gorge my car with gas and myself with French Vanilla cap. Then, like a thunderbolt hurled by the Olympian might of an overly-caffeinated, jacked up Mizzou student strung out on third shift jobs, a voice echoed from the loudspeaker: "Pump five, please pre-pay."

     Now I only allow five minutes each morning I spend in Columbia for that necessary fuel-stop, and that five minutes includes gassing and one trip in for payment and coffee; two trips in would put me behind schedule, dammit, and am I supposed to play guess what the gas tank will hold howdarethatpunkkid. With a few creative applications of a certain verb/participle/noun, I stormed the station with six dollars in my mitt to fire my Storm ninety-six miles to work. There, behind the counter, the grinning, Van-Dyked kid lorded and deigned to accept my pittance, my tribute to the great Dutch Petroleum Empire. With that inconvenience he coupled this edict: "Smile. It can't be that bad."

     Of course this nice little story is my segue into this week's Generi-Rant (tm). How damn very presumptuous of him, safe behind that anonymous counter, to issue that imperative for me to smile. Granted, my situation is not precarious nor dire (in the greater sense of life, mind you; I was not doing so well for ETDs that morning), but he expected me to smile on cue?

     I reserve that smile as a sign of my pleasure, and I did not derive pleasure out of that disruption of my comfortable routine, albeit one that slight. I share smiles with friends and relatives and even strangers when something provokes a recognition that life sparks humorous against us sometimes, or that in some instances humans can do nice things, or in appreciation for unsolicited kindness, as rare as that is.

     I do not proffer insincere smiles at the behest of others to assure them that we share that which we do not. I don't flash my teeth in an innocuous snarl to grease the wheels of unenthusiastic commerce. I refuse. I refuse. How dare he!

     But, of course, that's sometimes all a smile means these days: A small tool in the manipulative arsenal, designed to calm us, to reassure us that things may be as bad as we think, but at least they--the ones who would hope that our smile was a grin of complacence or blithe indifference--can try to blindside us yet. Actually, I should have said smiles mean that most of the time these days.

     Not for me. I shook my head gruffly, albeit it wearily and blearily, at the young Shellman, and growled, "Yes, it is." Actually, in retrospect and with the reflection that produced this column, I have to say it is worse.