Babel (free poetry click now!)

Itching to write, and wading through ideas,

Confused by the sheer wealth of options available.

Sorting cause and effect, action and consequence, victim and perpetrator;

Muddling them up in orderly fashion.

Casting out a net for fishy prospects, finding them unviable -

And releasing them dead.

Finding loopholes and getting knotted up in disentangling them.

Chasing the wind to clutch at straws.

Breaking a leg to kick up a storm.

Because I’m itching to write;

To find something and explain it,

Insert innuendo and loaded language,

romanticize and criticize…

Something!

Anything!!!



To hell with it. I’ll write nothing.

Best Friends for-like-Ever

I often trick myself into believing that I an expert songwriter who kindly and virtuously opts out of the songwriting industry for vague humanitarian reasons. So, whenever I happen to steer my thoughts down that path, I sit up and write songs. The melodies are too genius to bother reproducing and the lyrics can always be passed off as poems.

Well I had a dream one night. It was a strange sort. Apocalyptic and forbidding in the early stages, the dream greatly improved its attitude as it unfolded. As it ended, I was in some type of jungle paradise (visualize beautiful scenery, flowers, trees, an intervening river and absolutely no hungry otherworldly creature giving chase or even visible etc). In this pleasant setting, I began to hear a lady’s charming voice reciting the most beautiful, heart-warming, uplifting, amazing poem my ears ever heard. The voice was disembodied, sort of all over the scene, like a real life voice-over commentary. The poem was about myself and my virtues, romantic qualities and many admirable attractions. Ahem.

(I can not dwell upon how accurate the dream has been scientifically proven to be.)

At any rate I woke up suddenly, forgetting vast swathes of the dream immediately. Strangely enough, my initial reaction was to wish that those adoring words were being spoken by my Best Friend, or at the very least, were her secret inner thoughts. Suddenly I wanted her. Or “I thought that maybe I felt like I, like, wanted her, perhaps, or just something yucky like that.”

At the thought, a brief anxiety attack started but quickly resolved itself.

Strangely, before the dream, I’d never allowed myself to think of her in those terms. Here I was. She would be visiting soon, my Best Friend of ten years.

Shiny Rhetoric

Time heals old wounds. I decided to let time do its blessed work.

Therefore I steadfastly avoided Angela for a very long time. Her influence in my life was confusing and unpredictable – suspicious in a neither-here-nor-there kind of way. One is left wondering “what did she just do?” Call me paranoid. She stands out and so is easy to avoid. And is now a close friend of The Ex. My beloved mother should move expeditiously and warn me in no uncertain terms about cavorting with people like her. I mean, who walks around with an unexplained black eye and makes no effort to hide it behind her pair of dark stunners?

A new semester began in due time. The usual lot of self-styled and genuine buddies made good their perceived obligation to get into my business (read ribald jokes about how and why I was still single.) I characteristically professed my time-honored tradition of preaching about the uncomplicated life and its perks. They rolled their eyes. I resolved to rid myself of their bad influence and thus let time do its healing work on them.

As it turns out, inconvenient friends are harder to shake off than enemies.

Anyway, life marches on irrespective.

Forswearing Plagiarism (Part Four)

Angela was upbeat, for one whose eye had been ravaged by I-don’t-know-what. She evaded the question without tact, simply ignoring it whenever it arose. I wished I could give her a pirate-style eye-patch. She cared less, being more interested in tagging along to the arranged breakfast showdown with the Ex. She then took her time getting ready in her own bedsitter, and emerged looking vaguely attractive, but for her now purple black eye.

On the bus to town, I asked her to turn back and go home, catch some more sleep and overcome her hangover, leave me alone. I was getting confused as to who I was having a date with. “Who will you say you are? What are you going there to do?”

Without batting a blackened eye, she said, “I’m your attorney. I bet she’ll have her own chaperone around to protect her from your devilish charms.” Her wink and her placid way of phrasing it only made me angrier, but she hadn’t yet riled me to her satisfaction. “If you really wanted me to go back you would have left me behind while I was showering. So relax Negroid, get with the program. Let’s prepare a story. What’s your version of events?”

I narrated despite shock at being called Negroid.

By the time we got to Nairobi’s CBD, a tentative plan had been devised. The broad strategy was to deny liability for things which emerged in my journal, to convey regret nevertheless for any harm done by unauthorized access to said journal and to clarify the relationship status between myself and The Ex. It sounded like a good plan - except that Angela continuously referred to The Ex as “Our Wife”. (As it turned out, I should have read the portents and dropped this attorney like a bad hot potato.)

As we walked the streets side by side towards Burger Dome, pedestrians who saw Angela’s black eye turned to me with sour looks. She noticed that I was receiving undue credit for it and did nothing to correct the impression. I got angry, so that people who looked at me seemed to confirm that I’m a hotheaded beater of headstrong women, disrespecting of persons. Luckily FIDA doesn’t patrol the streets.

There was a smattering of patrons at Burger Dome. Two girls seated in a corner grabbed by attention. The Ex and her sister sat side by side in stony silence. The Ex looked stunning. Angela chose this moment to turn her swag on; she cat-walked majestically-ostentatiously towards their table. Sister of The Ex fixed me a glare which could only mean “who the blazes is this?” and I shrugged as if that would help anything.

I took the seat across from The Ex, who didn’t look up at all. To my left, Angela settled down with the announcement, “We have a situation and we hope to resolve this one amicably.” She sounded businesslike.

“You’re late. Who the blazes is this?” Sister of The Ex asked me with minimum cordiality.

“I’m his attorney,” declared Angela grandly, “We won’t have you two ganging up on him; I’ll let you know early.”

“Her name is Angela,” said The Ex to her sister, still looking down at her hands.

Sister of The Ex regarded Angela’s purple left-eye-area for a while, such that my ears became hot. “I didn’t do that,” I muttered. This statement made The Ex look up and naturally she located the center of attention. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, staring straight into Angela’s eyes. “That wasn’t there yesterday.” Her concern was plain.

Then she turned to me and asked me to excuse them. The request came to me as a surprise, and I hesitated. The Ex then demanded, “Go away, we’ll call you when we need you.”

I skulked to the counter, ordered a burger and juice and went to a corner from where I could warily view the three girls from a distance. They seemed, surprisingly, to be having a good time, and laughing rather too much for what I perceived to be a life threatening crisis. My burger tasted like sand in these circumstances, and the juice like saltwater. They mixed unconvincingly in my mouth and scraped and corroded their way down my throat into my stomach. Anger or suspicion or fear or self-consciousness mounted as I watched Angela lean forward and whisper something, and then all three girls flung their heads back with raucous laughter. They’re making fun of me, I thought, I have a good mind to just walk out and go away. I think I’ll do that. Oh no, I still have a mountain of food to clear. Maybe I should just toe the line and apologize to The Ex and take her home... that’d be nice wouldn’t it. Wow, look at her. What the hell are they talking about? One movie comes to mind, 'Chris Tucker (or suchlike names) Must Die', in which girls conspire to harm or kill a guy – I don’t know. The time is nigh for big bites and little chewing, boy. Run away, fast – or do you want to DIE? Hey, what happened to Chris Tucker eventually? I should watch that movie…

I forget the rest of my mental process.

After a while, all three girls moved to my table in greatly enhanced moods. The Ex could now afford to give me eye contact; consequently a knot tightened in my chest – apprehension. “A deal has been reached,” she said, oblique and confident. I opened my mouth to protest not being consulted about any deal in which I was implicated, but The Ex raised a finger to my lips and said, “You can write what you like in your journal about anyone you want. It’s your right. I guess I overreacted. ” I sighed with relief because, technically, she was right, but I shortly found out that this wouldn’t be all.

Sister of The Ex gave her interpretation with a self-assured smile and a cocky delivery: “You won’t remain single forever.” What a thing to say. The premises and conclusions of that statement suggested a lot. The implications were obvious to all present. Angela went as far as to chortle.

The Ex: “Our wife here will keep an eye on you for me.”

Panic flooded my head - I turned to Angela, my attorney, now Our Wife Here (?!?) and met her smug smile. Angela: “No pressure.” I was searching her eyes and she insisted on smiling self-absorbedly back at me as though we were on the same page of a wildly successful hostile takeover. A realization was mounting that something had long been decided and sealed as final, so that my understanding or consent was deemed immaterial to the inexorable forward march of destiny.

The Ex: “Now if you’ll excuse us we’ll have a ladies’ day out.”

Perceiving that I was being sent away, I forgot my snacks and asked, “Hasn’t it occurred to any of you that my input matters in this matter?”

“That’s a good question,” said Sister of The Ex, “but… Objection overruled.”

Laughter.

“Actually,” said my attorney Angela, “Your name has been cleared. You conducted yourself splendidly. You can leave! Acquitted! Toodles!” She waved her fingers at me in a gesture I instantly deemed to be disrespectful and aimed at minimizing my stature, a lackadaisical signal. The stab of betrayal caused me to scowl and set my jaw and clench my fist, even as I felt that I couldn’t quite place my finger on what exactly that betrayal was - if any. (All I know is that everyone was smiling mischievously for reasons not unveiled to me and so, logically, I had been betrayed, right?)

Somehow, I actually left. I heard laughter in my wake. A dark, dark thought in the blackest depths of my heart urged me to promote Angela to two black eyes. I regretted allowing her to come along. What had just happened?!? Was it good or bad?!? There wouldn’t be answers fast enough. I went back “home”.

Pragmatism (interlude/ Part three and a half)

Dragging furniture is hard and noisy work. I would have woken up all my neighbors at an ungodly hour – if there had been any neighbors around to wake up. It’s not that 4am is an optimal time to arrange one’s room; rather, that I’d woken up and walked straight into a wall! So I was undoing The Ex’s reorganization of my room for the integrity and longevity of my knees and forehead.

An angry knock on my door cut my efforts short. I opened the door with a matching facial expression and came face to face with Angela – with whom I have a strange sort of acquaintance midway between indifference and the occasional unwelcome remark. Glowering, she asked what I intended to do by “making a racket at this time of the night.” I started the whole tale about how I walked into the wall using GPS coordinates from before the room’s furniture was moved, but she wasn’t quite so interested that I had to finish explaining. She pushed her way in.

“Where’s your wife?”asked Angela, looking around and under the bed (!?!),”I helped her to civilize this jungle-clearing of yours yesterday… Her name, I think, was [The Ex]. We talked for hours.”

“She went home,” I said very opaquely in a tone I hoped was upbeat and hiding nothing while simultaneously seeking to deadpan that line of conversation.

Angela laughed. “You fought. Tell me, was that before or after make-up sex?” A certain sinking feeling coincided with the realization that Angela and The Ex had talked for hours rather too well in my self-imposed soccer-playing absence.

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“It’s already tomorrow, dimwit,” Angela spelled out, turning to face me squarely. I immediately saw that she had a black eye – worrying enough by itself, but also a chance to change the topic.

“Who did that to you?”I asked, “You have a black eye.”

She looked away.”What? Nothing.” Then she climbed into my bed quite innocuously (?!?) and fell fast asleep amazingly fast, because my many questions about the black eye were not answered. Eventually when I said goodnight in exasperation she corrected me (“You mean good morning”) and slept on. One would think I hadn’t even asked about black eyes or anything.

My new dilemma was where to sleep, seeing as my bed was occupied without prior notice. I considered joining her in there, and taking things to their natural conclusion, but I only went as far as considering it and smiling weakly at the idea. (My self-censorship is almost instinctual.) Eventually I found myself at a corner of my room I like to call The Office, watching muted TV when I wasn’t wondering what Black-Eyed Angela was up to – apparently, “sleep” was the limit of her intentions. Time seemed to pass languorously, the early morning silence was oppressive, Angela looked beautiful in her sleep, and I wrote things in my journal that don’t bear repeating here. Eventually the TV began to display 6am news and I started making breakfast.

Meanwhile, the rumor mill began to churn out results. My phone came alive with hot gossip texts about my activities of the previous day. In no particular order, some are listed here…

Carol: For covering all that distance I think she deserved better.

Jen: Hw cld u? I olwez knw u wr a gd 4 nuthn wannabe. Gud riddance fckr. She’ll gt ovr u.

Big Mac: Damnit big boy, you threw her things out and told her you laid her sister?! That’s just loooow! Did you hit her?

Myk: Please call me. Thank you.

Sam: You owe me a drink or ten. Nisambazie alafu tutayasahau hayo mengi.

Sister of The Ex: I’m in trouble with siz n she won’t talk. Wanna explain?

I sent a uniform response to all these friends of mine: “She read my journal without authorization and chose to leave. Don’t ask.” Each would interpret it differently but I wasn’t too bothered about that - not least what Jennifer would think, that “best friend” of The Ex who hated me um, mutually. Big Mac’s text was flawed in suggesting that I’d laid Sister of the Ex. All lies. I returned to making breakfast as “guilt waves” coursed through my conscience without good cause.

Angela didn’t wake up until 8am or thereabouts. At that time, she rolled onto her back, sat up and palmed her forehead in that trademark gesture perfected by hangover-sufferers. Her black eye looked most frightening because that particular eye was redder than the other. Her first words to me were, “I sort of liked her. Why did you fight?”

I served Angela breakfast in bed in the hope that she would shut up with her mouth full. Much as I wanted her to blab on and on and accidentally let slip the source of her black eye, I couldn’t deal with her talking about The Ex. Well, I was wrong. Angela talks no matter what is or isn’t in her mouth. “She suits you well. Her crazy out-there spontaneous style balances your reserved quiet mysterious style - not that you asked or anything, heck, I know you just don’t give a damn - but you need that sort of influence in your life or else God be my witness. Actually I like her. I think she likes me back… Can I have her? I mean, you obviously don’t know what to do with a good woman... [Etc, etc]” Believe it or not I was listening in awe. (How could anyone talk so much at breakfast? Didn’t her mother ever slap her for it?)

Sister of the Ex texted back: “Breakfast at 10. Burger Dome. You two have to TALK.”

I replied: “I’ve already had breakfast. Isn’t [The Ex] in Kisumu already?”

Sister of The Ex: “Ha. Breakfast is beside the point. Get there on time.”

It seemed The Ex hadn’t gone home yet. Her sister was arranging a meeting for us. It would be useful to talk. I turned to Angela: “I have to leave right now. It seems I have a date at ten.”


Angela went silent suddenly and focused on eating. I immediately became suspicious of whatever machinations were being devised in her head. My excessive paranoia was vindicated in short order: as soon as she finished wolfing down whatever remained of her breakfast, she said, “I’m coming along.”

Plagiarizing Facebook No More (Part 3)

Few people agree with my decisions to leave The Ex in my room, and to gather my thoughts at a soccer match. I don’t agree either. The problem only arises when you combine the two – which is inevitable.

Big mistake.

Two things tempered my enthusiasm at having scored four goals. First, it was done at a match of zero significance. Second, The Ex had somehow managed to absolutely rearrange the setup of my room in my two-hour absence.

In consternation, I asked whether she was into powerlifting, or else she would never have moved some of the furniture in there. She evaded the question entirely and waited for me to compliment her. A little while later she had waited in vain. (I thought it was useful to set the tone in ensuring that The Ex felt like an ex.)

At the time, she was seated cross-legged in a corner of the room previously called The Office. Her yoga position sat well with my general opinion of her as an odd character. But my blood pressure mounted – shot up – when I saw my journal open before her.

Yes, I keep a journal. I write only one thing in there, namely, The Truth. I wondered whether she had already reached the pages pertaining to herself. The safe approach would be to ask.

“You shouldn’t be reading that,” I hazarded, choosing the roundabout course. Meanwhile I was inching innocuously closer… surreptitiously…. undiscernibly… craning my neck…

“Stop sneaking up on me,” she said, turned the page and came to a pair of blank pages. She had finished reading all written pages in my journal, those relevant to herself and whoever and whatever else I had deemed fit to include in my random musings.

She sighed. “Interesting,” she said, “Now I know you lied about Anita, and you take my sister more seriously than me.”

(The next five minutes or so are censored and/or partly forgotten, because unfair accusations of all natures came at me, and my verbal handicap in superheated arguments does not bear displaying here. Suffice it to say some people can make arguments feel like wrestling mismatches.)

At the end of five minutes she was marching away with her bag and I was struggling to maintain pace beside her with her other bag. The bag I was carrying was heavier than hers, so I should have been the one with the moist eyes and a fractious attitude, but somehow she took the trophy in both respects.

She chose a suitably loud matatu and opted out of waving back. The stare she fixed me still haunts me.

Disclaimer: I still play soccer.

Still Plagiarizing Facebook (Part 2)

I love soccer. One can even say I’m addicted. I’ve previously made choices which caused bystanders to reevaluate my sanity. This happened where soccer was involved.

Forget the tired criticism that says “Soccer is a game in which twenty-two full-grown men run after an inflated spherical piece of leather for ninety minutes.” Add “WHILE HAVING SERIOUS FUN” and you’re spot-on.

Back to the day The Ex showed up in my living quarters, twenty-four hours after I’d left her alone five hundred kilometers away and heaved a sigh of relief which should have worried the Meteorological Department. I was still puzzled about what had brought her, and since I didn’t feel like talking to her, I couldn’t really ask.

The Ex cat-walked leisurely to my bed, sat down and then stretched her body, full-length, upon my duvet. I was glaring at her in angry incredulity – when I was not ogling. Maintaining righteous anger at a visually appealing attractive young lady blessed with Athena’s body is a feat which belongs exclusively in cheap fantasy romance novels. In the real world, you ogle a bit, slap yourself back to reality and glare like you should, slowly slide back to ogling with your tongue hanging out, then remember yourself and pinch yourself and glare, shortly find yourself ogling again, so you dash your head against a wall and glare in pain, ad infinitum.

She regarded me with that lazy smile, so that I was expecting words, but then she turned the smile towards the droning Al-Jazeera presenter. I was still watching her and mentally stringing together expletives when she said, “Where’s the remote? Get my bags.”

I had trampled repeatedly on my remote control ages ago - the batteries were, um, reluctant and the buttons could do with some heavy prodding (of course it doesn’t work like that). But that didn’t feature in my head as I processed her “bags” statement – what bags? A little while later I found them outside the door. I laid my hands on them, judged their weight and decided, “I need to get out of here,” and the thought rang true, stirring something deep inside of me. (You the reader are supposed to feel some deep sentimental emotion and empathize.)

The possibilities of sanctuary opened up before my mind’s eye instantly. My friend three floors above was hosting a swarm of blondes – that room was most likely hazy with smoke from, ahem, smoked vegetables. Tempting. Then there was that tree outside I’d always figured I should climb. Or I could bury my head in a pile of sand at a construction site about 500 meters away from my block. Such ideas flashed before my eyes.

I opted for something else entirely, the ultimate temptation. Dropping The Ex’s bags inside, I began packing my own bag. When I finally presented myself with a packed bag and something like “I’ll be back in a jiff,” she responded with, “Don’t let me fool you into thinking I’m not hungry!”

“I’m not fooled,” I replied, “I’m actually going to the shop.”

“With a bag?” she asked, “What’s in it, supplies for the long hike?”

Her sarcasm was wasted on me (okay, maybe not), but I summoned the genius in me and replied, “Round here we do barter trading. Cash is too futuristic.” She afforded me a genuine smile. This caused guilt to tug at my conscience but I kicked guilt in the teeth and steeled myself to execute the deception I’d already set myself firmly on committing.

I went to a soccer match whereby I started dreading the final whistle as early as kick-off. All the while, I was preparing myself to confront the Ex, to find out what she was up to, visiting me and making herself at home.

By the way, I scored four goals.

A Little Late Night Musing

I’m laying low. Life is leering lecherously at me. I quake in the corner. She (life, the bitch,) has lately landed some of her choice uppercuts on my jaw with jarring juddering impact.

But no, it’s not all bad. Today, a half-crush from the semi-forgotten past texted me. This lifted my spirits. (It shouldn’t have.) Perhaps she was just playing with her phone and my head. She could also have been just poking - don’t you just hate that poke thing on Facebook? You don’t? Sorry.

So, the half crush.

Uncertainty about her had flooded my mind in the distant past. On the face of it, she was a girl and I was a guy, thus it was all figured out and hence meant to be. (Primary school doesn’t encourage too much critical thinking, hence multiple choice national exams.) But my naïve mind was rescued at the unhappy moment when reality shone a harsh light on my dangerous naivety: I was only “infatuated”, and on top of that, highly reproductively capable, at least if you asked those guys who came round every now and then to threaten pupils with gruesome death from AIDs and guilt, leaving destitute illegitimate children roaming the streets as one burnt in hell for ever and ever. These hired doomsayers were in close collaboration with a cane-loving headmaster who constantly did violent “purges” of “boy-girl relationships”. Therefore I hardly even tried to nurture the half-crush into a crush.

This is not to mean there weren’t episodes. At a chance meeting, after we had both suffered the benefits of a few years of maturity, she told me (volunteering - without being asked) that it could never work between us. I was unsuitable, according to her, because she gravitated helplessly towards bad boy types. I took it in stride and nonchalantly and mightily-breezily patted down my carefully ironed suit. (Otherwise, inside, my alter ego screamt “Bloody f*cking sh*t!!!”) The conversation then crawled onward into more mundane things. But still…

Henceforth, after that event, I embarked on an initiative to ensure that in gender relations, I would be highly “suitable”, if you hear me correctly. Now the psychology-types among you will start yammering about how I was scarred for life but I beg to differ. Some experiences refuse to be rubbed off the head, no matter what moves are made to overcome their memory. DISCLAIMER: the experiences in themselves are pretty pedestrian and unremarkable, but as we all know, embarrassment gives a misstep the quality of immortality.

Moving on to other things… I recently did a small survey of the special ladies in my life. The list was alarming. (“Special” is not “hanky-panky”.) Not one of them is intimate in any relevant way, yet the variety is baffling. A look at the categories should make this apparent. Maybe I’m crazy to categorize, but I have in my list such illustrious ladies as a favorite ex best friend, favorite ex deskmate, a favorite ex groupmate, a favorite ex sit-across-table-in-library-and-exchange-suggestive-glances mate, a favorite ex neighbor, among others, and I haven’t even mentioned the favorite current lot, such as a favorite blog author I know a bit, and a favorite blog author I don’t know much of but wish I did. So I’ve finally figured out why I’m single and doomed to remain thus: One more favorite and I’ll have a nervous breakdown.

Otherwise, I quit the dating scene; it’s like a maze, complete with a bloodthirsty Minotaur (read The Ex) to panic your strategies for getting out. Having weaved my way out, I’m hoping the Minotaur didn’t catch my scent and follow me out into my austere retirement.

I’m off to text the ex-half-crush back. Hopefully it’ll remain distant, lukewarm and platonic. Fat chance.

Plagiarizing Facebook

The title means that from now henceforth the posts that appear on this blog will have been copied word for word from my Facebook page or else I'll drag them straight out my head. Some of my memories make for dull stories but have to find an outlet. Praise the Blog.

On to other matters.

I'd come to Nairobi from home sweet home, Kisumu, where I'd been trying to act like an ex towards my ex. Otherwise put, I avidly avoided her and pretended to be having a good time when I couldn't avoid her. This included being rather too loud and chummy with my lady ex best friend on phone. Anyway, developments were such that by the time the holiday ended (actually I fled to Nairobi long before time), we had bared our fangs and had a fight to end all fights - nothing physical. Her verbal lashing was ably met by my logical reasoned arguments about rubbing friends forever and ever. She blamed me for a variey of things, including Atheism and Anarchism, and I in turn thought her bum looked fat in that. Thus did we part amicably: just like I wanted it.

Why we left one another? The single life is so uncluttered but you can't tell from seeing my room. Relationships are for later. AND Yes we left one another; she didn't leave me, and I insist to death.

I thought I was in charge, having come out with minor ego burns. Trust The Ex to have feminine wiles for correcting the anomaly. She came right at me, weeks later, in my school-time bedsitter-type room (Blue and White, a home away from home), knocking the door at a time when I was dozing a dull afternoon away in the ambience of an Al Jazeera presenter's voice. My shock on seeing her outside my door was well hidden... at least I hope so.

"Wrong house, lady," I told her, pulling off the most malevolent glare my grogginess could afford. Trust The Ex to simply walk in. I wanted to go Hey I'm talking to you but decided against it. It just wouldn't work.

She had on this smile. Now this smile... She seemed to be seeing through me and smiling at my weak fight. You know better than that, she seemed to be saying, Admit it, boy, you missed me. The smile charmed my insides. But when she lavished the same smile on the furniture, the messy desk, the pile of clean laundry on my bed and even the air, all in the process of giving my place an appraising glance, I decided it was a mocking smile so I shouldn't excite myself.

"What do you want?" I demanded, feeling less outraged and more apprehensive than I was sounding. I also knew full well that she had travelled a massive distance - all the way from Kisumu to Nairobi, in order to... to...

to do what?

She had not spoken a word. As I stared at that smile, I felt real fear in the pit of my stomach.