A sucker for smilers

“Is your name ********?” I asked a lady in the YMCA’s swimming-pool.
“Yes,” she smiled, beaming broadly.
“I’ve become a sucker for smilers,” I thought to myself.
“And your name is.......”
“You can call me BobbaLew. I told that to *****-the-lifeguard, and she liked that.”
I happen to be Facebook “friends” with the YMCA’s aquacise-instructor. I fired up one of her photographs a while ago, and was smitten. She was smiling. It prompted my first Facebook “like” in 10 years of Facebooking. I have little time for Facebook.
Last Saturday I struck up a conversation with another lady in the YMCA pool. She smiled broadly. “Yer lighting up this pool,” I thought.
I wish I could smile like that. I’m sure I do occasionally, but not on request. “Robert-John, will you please smile?” Guilty-as-always!
It’s my dreadful childhood of course. Convinced at an early age I was “rebellious” and “of-the-Devil.” I couldn’t worship my father as worthy of the right hand of Jesus.
“You’re always blogging that,” a friend notes. “Ya gotta not let that rule yer life.”
Easier-said-than-done. After 74 years ya don’t flip a childhood like that. Another lady agreed, saying what a shame it was religion could cause that.
“I’m glad I said hello,” I said to ********. “Ten years ago I wouldn’t have.”
I had to lose the best friend I ever had (my wife) to learn it’s often better to start a conversation.

• I do aquatic balance training in the Canandaigua YMCA’s swimming-pool, two hours per week — plus a third hour on my own.