You might have been able to figure this out once you see this, but my technical skills are sorely lacking.

With words, however...well, some believe I'm an artist.

So as I tried to create a fresh blog to tell my stories, I decided I'd rather write than be frustrated with creating a "look". That's never been a problem for me, by the way.

As a kid, my look was pretty simple - dirt on every surface, exposed or concealed. Dirt where dirt had no business being unless you're a boy and young. Dirt in which I reveled, reliving my Dad's tales of WWII at Normandy, where he was wounded. Getting dirty taking out hundreds of plastic Nazis in my backyard - in the early 60's, nothing was quite so satisfying.

I aged a bit, always smiling, always hoping to hone my sports skills (which were actually acceptable, at least through high school). And as I got to high school, my look changed. It was the early 70's, and my look had rebellion (with my trademark smile, of course) written all over it - a white guy with a 12" afro in which I hid pencils, combs, and other things not to be mentioned. I'd like you to think it was perhaps my look that helped end the Vietnam war.

Then I got sick shortly after high school. The Look became something for which my youth had not prepared me - I lost weight, became gaunt and frail and looked like a zombie - with a big smile, at least most of the time. I stayed that way until The Look required some physical changes....

My illness had me down, and with one step I lost the ability to securely walk or run. I became very much like the Cheshire Cat, a big, warm smile with all the rest just barely hanging on. And with my new appliance - my wheelchair - my life was transformed....and led by a smile.

The chair was hardly a hindrance. In fact, the harder I pushed, the stronger I got. The stronger I got, the more I pushed. The smile was always there, because without that smile, without the constant pain of juvenile diabetes accompanied by severe depression, complicated by an inability to trust, I might have lost out on a lot of good things.  Was it my smile that balanced the equation? After all, my personality is a bit different...friendly with many, close friends with so few. Quirky sense of humor, fun to be around when I'm making fun of this Modern Life and all its electronic mind numbers...yes, I can be different.

No, the catalyst for my feeling better was simple - when I smiled at someone, odds were they would smile back. And it was that visual, that small piece of caring enough to smile that put me on a better path. I didn't have to talk to you, take you out, get to know you...all I had to do was smile, and as you smiled back we each gave a little and got a lot.  The smile was the one piece of My Look that seemed the most viable, least compromised and emotionally secure choice.

It really is that simple. No social awkwardness, nothing lost if that smile wasn't returned...I learned, perhaps too late, the value of the simplest of kindnesses, of a non - verbal, quiet microbit of human communication.

And it was good! Meanwhile, I'll get to sprucing up this new blog so I can begin some serious stuff...yeah, right. Maybe next life. Smile!