Things that make you smile

[BlueTrain]

There are things that tick people off but surely there are as many things that make you smile when you see them. They might be crude and vulgar, they might be commonplace, they might be hard to understand and they might even be unsafe. They probably wouldn't be anything you'd do, of course.

I was reminded of this when driving back from the beach on Friday. You see this now and then and invariably it's a young woman or girl: someone sitting in the front seat with their feet up on the dashboard. It doesn't make me laugh but it always brings a smile to my face.

Surely there are other things like that but my recall isn't too good anymore. Maybe seeing a rainbow or catching sight of a deer from the dining room window will make me smile.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Looking at my dog & reading a witty comment on this forum.

 

[Fading Fast]

As grumpy as I might come across on this forum, I smile all the time as I find so much joy and happiness in little things I see everyday.

Coming back from the gym this morning, I saw two big, manly looking construction guys (250lbs of heft each, workman jeans - no "selvedge" nonsense - T-shirt and hardhats) clearly seeing each other for the first time since the weekend, one had brought the other a coffee and they greeted each other with a few slaps on the back and with big smiles on their faces, then, started talking about the weekend (for the three seconds of conversation I heard as I passed).

It was just a nice scene of friendship to see - and that one was white and one black only hit me as I walked away. I love moments like that - they always bring a smile to my face.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A cat sleeping flat on her back with her feet drawn up, balanced on the edge of a chair cushion.

A check in the mailbox.

A small child shoving popcorn into her face with both hands.

Baby skunks in the backyard.

Pastrami.

David Ortiz.

 

[Fading Fast]

...A check in the mailbox....

As opposed to one of the great dissembling lines of the snail-mail era: "the check is in the mail."

 

[BlueTrain]

Our cat is a Maine Coon cat and he does indeed sleep on his back sometimes. He sleeps a lot. Another thing he does is to rub his front (declawed) feet on our shoes and sometimes on our feet whenever he's nearby and we're standing still (if he feels like it). If he isn't curled up somewhere sleeping, he likes to be within touching distance.

 

[Fading Fast]

Most of the posts in the threads "What are you having for breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc" as you can feel the joy and excitement in those.

Life is hard, but you can tell that most people grab a bit of fun everyday from their meals. And like mine, most aren't elaborate or even expensive, just the stuff you personally enjoy eating. I smile all the time reading those posts.

N.B. Touch of Evil's very recent post on his second breakfast in the "What Did You Have for Breakfast" actually got an out loud chuckle out of me. He takes such joy in his meals, it is infectious - I enjoy hearing about them at least half as much as he enjoys eating them.

 

[sheeplady]

My kids are number one, husband rates second. What makes me total mush is seeing my two kids being kind to one another, playing with one another, and loving on each other. It is really sweet.

I really enjoy accomplishing (particularly a physical) job.

 

[Fading Fast]

Passing by an open-front store or brownstone stoop where a few people are hanging out listening to a baseball game on the radio.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Some minutes ago, I drove home. At one traffic-light, I saw the young couple in the car behind me. I guess, a 20+couple. They looked like teenagers. The girl was on driver-seat and her boy was bent over to her and dried her neck with a tissue. Cute.

 

[Fading Fast]

Passing by an open-front store or brownstone stoop where a few people are hanging out listening to a baseball game on the radio.

Edit add: today, this ⇧ is really rare, but growing up, it was quite common. What made me think of it was a few days ago, I went by a store that had all its casement windows open and I heard the ballgame playing. Radio announcing of a ballgame doesn't seem to have changed in style as much as other things - it still sounds similar to what I remember hearing growing up in the late '60s/'70s. I will still listen to a game on the radio as it, oddly, feels more intimate than watching it on TV. Don't get me wrong, if a TV is available, I'll watch not listen, but if I'm working at something where I can have the game on in the background, I'll happily listen to it on the radio.

 

[GHT]

Much as I hate seeing graffiti blighting the place, when it's witty it still makes me smile. In the gents lavatory in one of London's underground stations I saw, in front of me, as I used the urinal, an instruction: "Look up." I knew I should have ignored it, I didn't. Further up the wall it said: "Look up." Then higher up the wall it said, "Look up," on the ceiling it said: "Look down, you're peeing on your shoes."

This guy makes me smile:

 

[LizzieMaine]

Edit add: today, this ⇧ is really rare, but growing up, it was quite common. What made me think of it was a few days ago, I went by a store that had all its casement windows open and I heard the ballgame playing. Radio announcing of a ballgame doesn't seem to have changed in style as much as other things - it still sounds similar to what I remember hearing growing up in the late '60s/'70s. I will still listen to a game on the radio as it, oddly, feels more intimate than watching it on TV. Don't get me wrong, if a TV is available, I'll watch not listen, but if I'm working at something where I can have the game on in the background, I'll happily listen to it on the radio.

You couldn't walk down my street on a summer night without hearing the Red Sox game coming thru every screen door. The big difference between now and then is that for the Sox, anyway, only about 50 games a year were telecast -- mostly on Fridays and weekends. All the rest of the schedule, radio was the only way to follow it, and this remained true well into the mid-1970s. It was a very big deal when WSBK got the Red Sox television rights in 1975 and announced they were going to telecast about a hundred games that year -- we'd never seen anything like that before. But even after that, radio remained the main thing in stores and gas stations and at the shore.

Today every game is telecast on NESN, and radio is a shadow of what it used to be. Where you used to spin up and down the AM dial and find four or five stations broadcasting the game at once -- more after dark -- now you have to twiddle around and try to fish WTIC out of the murk if you want to listen to the game. And when you do, you have to put up with ridiculous blasting music bumpers, bombastic "Ricky Radio" ESPN-style announcers, and every jock-scratch being sponsored.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Market-economy killed and kills OTR.

In Germany, there is a trend, to transform our still existing public pseudo-OTR's more and more to info-mixed radios, bringing it more near to the existing pure info-radios. Public radio goes market-economies "maximum-principe". Productivity-enhancement-reformations.

 

[Bushman]

I'm a simple man with simple tastes. Things that make me smile include:
-Bonfires
-Christmas decorations
-Halloween costumes
-Autumn trees
-Pine forests
-My girlfriend (though, I suppose that's not a thing)
-Fireworks
-A strong thunderstorm
-The scent of a good book
-Quiet, gently falling snow
-My mask collection
-Going on walks in the local forest preserve
-A nice, dry cheese

 

[GHT]

I'm a simple man with simple tastes. Things that make me smile include: Halloween costumes.

You might like a special shirt my wife made me to wear at a Halloween party:

 

[Fading Fast]

I am an early riser and go to the gym at really early morning hours. This morning. I saw a tractor trailer truck trying to back out of a very tight side street as a garbage truck doing its rounds was approaching. The guy on the side of the garbage truck, hopped off, directed his truck back and then helped direct the tractor trailer truck out - without having once talked to the tractor trailer driver, who took the offered direction and guidance unconditionally.

When the tractor trailer was out and about to head up the avenue, he gave a big wave and honk to the garbage man, who waved back and hopped back on the side of his truck. The whole think took a minute or two, but it was so nice to see a random act of kindness and sincere appreciation that I smiled the rest of the way to the gym.

 

[BlueTrain]

Not to make a big deal of it but I don't think government is supposed to make a profit. If so, the first thing they will have to do is to disband the War Department.

It is not unusual to wave at someone almost anywhere but you know you're out in the country when passing vehicles stop in the middle of the road so the drivers can talk to one another.

Another thing that make me smile is to notice a turtle when I'm out for a walk in the woods. It's nice to see deer, too, and they're really a lot more interesting but the turtle won't run away so quickly. But seeing a fox will make my day.

I listen to all kinds, well, several kinds of music. Some songs will always make me smile, especially something like Mele kalikimaka. Some versions, like one in French I heard the other day, are really different. We've all heard the Andrews Sisters, I assume. There is also the Puppini Sisters, who have a really good 40s style harmony and sing mostly the old classic swing numbers. They also do Mele kalikimaka.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

We no longer have a War Department. What we have instead is the kinder, gentler Department of Defense. So remember that when you're obliterated by a drone strike, we're doing it defensively, and with sincere regret.

 

[GHT]

We no longer have a War Department. What we have instead is the kinder, gentler Department of Defense. So remember that when you're obliterated by a drone strike, we're doing it defensively, and with sincere regret.

British News always reports gunshots, and any casualties it causes, from your own side and that of your allies, as friendly fire. Doesn't strike me as being very friendly.