Smile

 

Chaplin in Modern Times, 1936

Charles Spencer Chaplin wrote “Smile,” a song that appeared in his 1936 film, Modern Times. I used to teach a little Chaplin to my eighth graders when we were studying Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush. Charlie has a great film about that Rush, The Gold Rush (1925). I showed that entire film to my students.

I was thinking about “Smile” today when I somehow got to thinking about the different ways people smile—I’ve seen much evidence on Facebook.

There are people who show virtually all their teeth, people who show no teeth, people who just purse their lips, people who seem not to smile but whose glittering eyes betray them, people whose smile much resembles a sneer, and so on (I’ll name no names).

Except my own. I show no teeth (if I can help it). This goes back to my boyhood when some in my family (alarmed that I rarely brushed my teeth) told me that I would grow up to have “yellow snags.” And so I quit showing my snags when I smiled. The only time you’ll see my teeth on Facebook is when I am laughing—or inattentive.

They’re actually not bad teeth—generally straight. And my dentist has never called them “yellow snags”—though perhaps she’s just being kind?

And Joyce married me, yellow snags and all, and she also told me, more than fifty years ago now, that if my teeth had been bad she wouldn’t have been attracted to me, literary brilliance and overall charm and “hotness” be damned.

My Osborn grandparents both had false teeth, full sets—which was far more common than it is now. Nowadays we have far better dental care options—implants for the yellow snags, etc.

Our dog Sooner showed his teeth a lot—this the dog we had from the early 1950s to the early 1960s when a driver hit him not far from our house in Hiram, Ohio, and zoomed away to let him die. I would still kill that person today if I found him/her. And every judge in the land would rule “justifiable homicide.”

Anyway, Sooner growled, showing teeth, when strangers or other dogs came around. And when my dad was playing with him (oh, he loved my dad!), he would, with Dad’s prompting, grin—wag his tail like crazy and grin! It’s one of my great childhood memories.

Not enough public grinning and smiling today. We’re too uptight. Too polarized. Too angry at ... whatever.

Maybe we all need need a dose of the great Charlie Chaplin. His films are on YouTube. And his song about smiling.

Link to song “Smile.”

Link to Modern Times.