Smile - rough draft column

let me know what you think so I can get this turned in :)


In 1999 an artist known as Vitamin C came out with a song entitled “Smile.” The song “smile” talks about exactly that, smiling, when things get tough. Vitamin C couldn’t have said it better than me in the Corus where she repeatedly says “put a smile on your face, and make the world a better place.”
Is it possible that a smile is contagious? According to Dictionary.com smiling is defined a facial expression indicating pleasure, favor, or amusement, but sometimes derision or scorn, characterized by an upturning of the corners of the mouth. I believe a smile is one of the easiest life changing gestures you could ever give someone. More times than not people think that they have to donate a certain amount of money, or go to a different country to make a difference. But whatever happened to the simple gesture of a smile. Even when you don’t feel like smiling Vitamin C reminds us
When thing's isn't right, there's not need to fightand everything nice Please be polite even when you're hurting Don't forget to smile Give love to our nation, big or small When you do good, you'll get your reward United with undivided we fall Put a smile on your face and greet one and all
My spring break of 09’ did not consist of laying on the beach in Panama City Florida nor did it consist of clubbing in South Padre. My spring break consisted of family time in Bellevue Nebraska and developing my own idea of a way to influence someone’s life.
My cousin Stephanie and I are partners in crime when it comes to doing random acts of kindness but for this particular spring break we decided we were going to make a gigantic sign and hold it on a bridge on Dodge Street, a main street, in Omaha.
Deciding what to put on the sign was one of the more difficult things for us. We had to come up with something, short, inspiring in some way, not offensive, and something with an immediate response so we could tell if we were successful in perhaps making someone’s day go from bad to good.
“Have a good day” was far too bland and “Pray, he listens” could have gotten us into some trouble seeing as though we were in the heart of Omaha.
After a couple days of thought, we came up with “Honk if you are smiling.”
Now this may seem kind of bland as well, but we picked this one for a number of reasons. First of all we decided to put honk because we wanted to have an immediate response. If we wouldn’t have put honk we would have never of known if people even noticed us let alone read what we wrote.
We decided to use the word smile because we both feel like the power of the smile is contagious. Driving is one of the single most relaxing things to do, in my opinion. It gives you time to think and sort things out but more times than not your probably not going to be smiling in your car.
Did it ever occur to us that maybe, just maybe someone driving beside you was having a worse day than you were and just the small gesture of a smile could have totally turned that day around.
Stephanie and I stood on the doge street bridge for about an hour during rush hour and counted how many honks we got. Not knowing how this was going to turn out I was pleasantly surprised at the response we got.
We received 97 honks! Now whether or not this person was simply driving down the road smiling because they heard something funny on the radio, was involved in a funny phone conversation or maybe just saw our sign and decided to smile I believe Stephanie and I helped make Dodge street a happier place.