When Joe and I got engaged, my family warned him that I possessed a powerful emotional weapon: the trembling lower lip. No human being had ever been able to resist the lower lip, they told him, and they predicted that he, too, would be helpless before its power.
"You might as well just give in right away when you see it start," my father advised him. "No sense in putting off the inevitable."
But maybe because he had been forewarned, Joe seemed, at least early on, significantly unimpressed with my trembling lower lip, which he called the Pouty Face.
"Is that all you've got?" he would say. "This is what everyone warned me about?" And he would shake his head.
But since then he has developed a healthy respect for the Pouty Face, perhaps due to its tendency, when ignored, to dissolve into a Tearful Face. Not many men can reckon with a woman's Tearful Face, even with all their arsenal of manly weapons.
Joe does not want to get to this stage, therefore he does not want ME to get to this stage. He periodically conducts a reconnaissance of my face, and if he sees the slightest hint that the lower lip is thinking of pushing outward from the upper lip, he goes into action.
One day he suddenly asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, bewildered, because nothing really was wrong.
He looked accusing. "You're making the Pouty Face. Something's wrong."
"Oh," I said, trying to imagine what my face was doing. "I'm just thinking. This can be a Thinking Face, too."
"No, no, no," he said in agitation. "You can't use the Pouty Face for a Thinking Face. They have to be different. How am I supposed to know when something's wrong if you use the Pouty Face for other things?"
"But the eyes are different in a Thinking Face," I said.
"I'm supposed to look at your EYES, too?" he said, exasperated.
I helpfully suggested carrying a large sign when I am truly pouting, such as ATTENTION: POUTING IN PROGRESS. DISTURB.
"Just get a different face for thinking," he said.
Figures. In a discussion about emotions, I get an assignment.
3 comments:
really what is the value of a thousand words these days - near nothing - in the day of word processors and copy and paste it's just too much.
give me 3-5 well chosen words and that's something i'l sit up for. but what ever you do don't give me any lip :)
Each day I seem to learn something new about you, through your writings. What a hoot!I think the "thinking face" should be from the eye brows and eyes. You know what they say, "the eyes are the window of the soul"
Each day I seem to learn something new about you, through your writings. What a hoot!I think the "thinking face" should be from the eye brows and eyes. You know what they say, "the eyes are the window of the soul"
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