i want a wide-brimmed panama hat!

Waiting to buy stamps at the post office, I smiled – briefly, impersonally, or so I thought – over my shoulder at the tall elderly gentleman who appeared in line behind me, then turned back to face the front.

His voice, rusty and deep, came from behind me: “You have a very nice smile,” and I turned back just in time to see his two index fingers drawing a curve in the air, somewhat reminiscent of a concert conductor, each finger swooping outward from the middle of his mouth to his earlobes, signifying, I suppose, that my own smile stretched as widely.

“Thank you,” I said in surprise.
Under the Panama hat, a colorful scarf jauntily wrapped around its crown, his wise old eyes crinkled with an answering smile. “You know why?” he asked.
“No; why?”

“It’s because you have happy thoughts.” And he beamed with approval.

I don’t know how it is that, through no fault of my own, I always manage to solicit random remarks from total strangers, but that encounter was sufficiently amusing that I couldn’t help smiling the whole rest of the day.

::happy thought::

Pass it on.