Canine to canine

Sunday. You wake up after a relaxing afternoon nap. You look at the time. Its 5:30. You remember you still need go shopping for your everyday supplies. You've been putting it off since Saturday morning, so its either now or the next weekend. You realise you can't do without razor blades for a week, so you shove yourself out of bed and make yourself decent enough to walk to the neighborhood market.

So, you're walking down the road, all relaxed, wearing your pair of shorts and an old T-shirt, glad that you made yourself get out of bed and go for this walk on this beautiful Sunday evening. As you're walking, you see another person approaching from the opposite direction. You're in a good mood, you feel like whistling to yourself, but you don't, thinking that passing-by women might take exception. You see a man walking in the opposite direction, towards you. When you're about to cross each other, your eyes meet. You give him a smile, a genuine 'Isn't it a nice evening?' smile, owing to your good mood. You expect him to return your good-natured gesture. Its not too much to expect of a fellow human being. A smile to acknowledge a smile. It doesn't have to be an ideal world for that to be possible.

But he doesn't. Instead, he gives you a scowl. A look, that, for a moment, makes you wonder if you've ever wronged this person in any way. You haven't. This is the first time you've ever seen this person. Then why, why does he seem to hate you? Why does he look like he wants to murder you? Why, oh why, does he look like he wants you to burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity?

Determined not to let it ruin your spirits, you brush it off as a one-off incident. You move along, but now you think twice before flashing a stranger a smile. In your joviality, you become daring, even to the point of recklessness. You decide to give the smiling thing another try. Surely, the scowl won't happen another time. The first guy was probably in a bad mood. In your naïveté, you place your trust in the humanity of humanity, and venture to push your luck. You walk along, ready to flash a smile to the next gentle-man who comes your way. You see one at a distance, walking towards you. From his silhouette, you can see that he's walking with the gait of a boxer who was wounded in his last fight and can't wait to exact his revenge. You walk along slowly, dreading the moment when his face comes into view. For some reason, you heart begins to beat faster, it has nothing to do with your lack of exercise or the length of the walk. You've barely walked 50 meters and you just know you're only another 25 away from an ideology-altering experience.

With your metaphorical finger on your metaphorical smile-trigger, you're having second thoughts about shooting. You wonder if you should have brushed your teeth this morning, you wonder how wide a smile you should offer so that he doesn't think of you as some sort of a pervert or just plain crazy. You finally decide upon a canine to canine smile, barely showing the beginnings of your first premolar.

A car, at high beam as always, comes at a high speed from behind you. His features are suddenly thrown into sharp relief. Shadows of his nose and brow on his face traverse a small arc on his forehead. The sudden exposure to bright light makes him narrow his eyes further which only heightens your terror upon seeing his face. In your stupefaction, you keep on walking, but your metaphorical finger slips, and your face lights up with a molar to molar smile, well beyond the premolar limit you had thought of. The man, now mere feet away, looks at you. He sees you smiling brightly at him through the blind spot in his eye left from the bright headlights of the car. He assumes you're laughing at his predicament and gives you another venomous look, your second of the day.

You don't understand what you did wrong. You had only good intentions in mind. All you wanted was to spread your cheer, share your happiness with the world, but the people of the world have only contempt for you. Your high spirits, flirting with the clouds mere moments ago, fall a long way and crash to the ground around you. You hear every piece break with the sound of your belief in the kindness of all humankind shattering. You walk on their shards, hoping that they won't cut through your rubber sandals and leave a scar at the bottom of your feet, which nobody would ever see, but would make it impossible for you to walk without feeling the pain in every step.