Can I sell you a smile?

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Yesterday was eerie. What has happened to the smile?

I spent most of yesterday in stores, catching up on needed (okay, okay, and a few unneeded) purchases, and I found smiles in short supply.

Fellow shoppers concentrated on the product right in front of them, neither looking to the right or to the left until they could without making eye contact. I tried smiling the few times that I did make eye contact, but no smile was reflected back.

Isn't that some law of physics? That a smile is contagious?

And maybe that is the problem: no one wants to be catching something contagious from a perfect stranger.

But finally, towards the end of my day, I smiled and I got a great big smile in return.

Of course, she wanted to sell me make-up that would have cost me a day's wages, but I sold her a smile.

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