Sorry I Saw You

The mandatory smile nobody consented to

Photo by Jouwen Wang on Unsplash

I was having lunch with my friend Hailey last Friday at a Vietnamese place. We were sitting near the exit, which is my first mistake, because sitting near the exit means you are technically part of the door.

A woman, maybe thirty, finished her meal and walked toward us on her way out. She wasn’t coming to our table. She was coming to the door. We just happened to be in the flight path.

Then it happened. Her eyes met Hailey’s. By accident. A pure collision. Two strangers whose eyeballs arrived at the same coordinates through no fault of their own.

Then they smiled at each other. Both of them. Immediately. A small, tight, apologetic smile, the kind you’d give a police officer who pulled you over for something you did do.

Then the woman left. Gone forever. They will never see each other again. For one quarter of a second, they performed the ancient ritual: I have seen you, and I am sorry.

I said to Hailey, “What was that?” She said, “What was what?” She didn’t even know she did it. That’s the part that keeps me up. It’s automatic. It’s installed at the factory.

Because I need someone to explain this. Why is the smile the polite response to accidental eye contact? Why. Who decided that the correct reaction to two eyeballs meeting is to bare your teeth like a nervous chimp?

Think about what the smile is actually saying. It’s saying: I know we looked at each other. I acknowledge the incident. I harbor no violent intentions. Please do not report me. It’s not warmth. It’s a receipt.

You MUST do it. That’s the tyranny. If you don’t smile, you’re the villain here. If a stranger’s eyes land on yours and you just hold the gaze, neutral, a human being with a face, you’re a psychopath. You have committed a crime. The crime of not apologizing for being visible.

So we all walk around BEAMING at people we will never speak to, because the alternative is being reported to some invisible committee for the offense of Having Regular Eyes.

I tried an experiment once. A twenty-year-old girl caught my eye on the U-Bahn, by accident, and she did her part. She smiled. The reflex, right on schedule. I decided, purely for science, not to return it. I would simply be a person, existing, with my normal face. Do you know what happened?

She thought I was menacing. She got off two stops early. She had paid me a smile in good faith, I had left the debt unpaid, and just like that I was the most dangerous man on the U-Bahn.

So now I over-correct. Now when someone catches my eye I smile so hard my ears move. I want there to be no ambiguity. I am THE friendliest man alive. I have seen you and I could not be more delighted about it. Please tell your family I’m one of the good ones.

Hailey says I’m overthinking it. She says the smile is just being nice. But being nice to whom? This is a woman she will never meet, never think about again, whose entire existence in Hailey’s life was four feet of walking near a door. But Hailey gave her a smile. A free smile. Handed it over like a receipt for a purchase neither of them made.

I don’t want to be free of kindness. I want to be free of the mandatory kindness. The reflex. The little tax we all pay for the sin of looking up at the wrong moment.

Imagine a world where you could accidentally stare at a stranger and both of you just let it happen. No smile. No apology. Two people who briefly shared some light hitting their retinas, and then moved on with their dignity.

But we’ll never get there. And I’d be the first to ruin it. Because if you and I ever passed each other near some exit, and our eyes collided the way eyes do, you would smile. And I, the man who just wrote all this, would smile back before my brain could stop my face.

I’d pay the tax. Every time.

I’d probably tip.

This piece was originally published in Wit & Wisdom with Srini on Substack

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