[wdfifteen]

I am a cranky old fart. My wife is exactly the opposite. She is so relentlessly cheerful it makes me sick. She has this thing where she makes one person smile every time we are out. It works for her. Standing in the checkout lane or wherever, she says something to someone and suddenly they are like best friends.

Me - not so much. Just leave me alone.

But she has challenged me to try, and sometimes I do OK. For example:

Last fall I was in the grocery checkout line behind a guy whose wife obviously left him with the cart. Her purse was in it. So I said to the guy, "Nice purse." He was the coolest dude! He said it's getting on to fall, and he was thinking of changing to a different color and some other stuff. His wife came back and heard us talking about purses and was like "WTF???" It was hilarious.

Some guy was parked in the middle of one of our narrow country roads. Pickup with a gooseneck trailer. I was pissed. GTF out of the way! Then he started backing up. There was a cut in the line of brush beside the road that was so narrow I almost didn't see it, and darned if there wasn't a little strip of a gravel drive in it. He backed that 24 or 28 foot trailer straight into the gap with 2 feet to spare on each side on the first try. Once he was in I pulled up and stuck my arms out the window and applauded the guy. Big smile from him.

A couple of days ago I was in line at the grocery with three things in my hand and a woman with a little girl was in front of me with a cart full. She invited me into line in front of her! There was a rack of candy bars right by and I asked the girl what kind of candy bars she liked. Long story short I bought her a candy bar and told the girl to tell her mother "thank you."