Mina was shy.
Not a little bit shy.
The kind of shy where walking into a room full of people felt like walking into weather.
Where talking to strangers required three deep breaths and then usually didn’t happen anyway.
So instead of talking to people, Mina counted their smiles.
Just counted.
Her own private tally, in a small notebook with a green cover. 😊
🏙️ The Tally
Monday: fourteen smiles on the bus. Six at the market. Two at the library (people are quieter there).
Tuesday: a man got a phone call that made him smile and then cry and then smile again. Mina counted that as three.
Wednesday: a woman with a baby in a carrier, and the baby’s whole face was a smile, and it made everyone near them smile too, which made a total of eleven from one baby.
“One baby is worth eleven smiles,” Mina wrote in her notebook.
She studied her tallies like data.
Smiles were more common near food. Near children. Near dogs. Near music.
Smiles were rarer in rain. On Monday mornings. In queues.
She started to wonder: could she change those numbers?
😊 The Experiment
Mina decided to try.
In the queue at the post office — a Monday morning queue, notoriously grim — she drew a small smiley face on a sticky note.
Stuck it to the back of the chair in front of her.
The woman behind her saw it. Smiled. Pointed it out to her husband. He smiled. The man in front turned around to see what was funny. He smiled.
Four smiles. One sticky note. Two minutes.
Mina wrote it down.
She tried it at the bus stop. At the waiting room. At the corner near the café where the same grey-coated man stood every day looking at nothing.
The grey-coated man found a sticky note in his pocket that he didn’t put there.
He looked up at the street.
Smiled.
💛 Theodore Gets a Note
Theodore found a sticky note on a bench that said: You look like you’re thinking something interesting.
Theodore looked around.
A girl with a green notebook was walking quickly away.
“Hey!” said Theodore.
Mina stopped.
Three deep breaths.
“Was this you?” said Theodore, holding up the note.
“Yes,” said Mina. “It’s an experiment.”
“What kind?”
“I’m trying to add smiles to places that don’t have enough,” said Mina.
Theodore looked at the note. Looked at Mina.
Smiled.
“Did it work?” said Mina, pen already out.
“Add one,” said Theodore.
Mina added one.
And then — very shyly — one more, for herself. 😊