The open mouthed smile

Tonight I was looking through photos from my birthday earlier this year. You know, the one where I threw a freaking cake on the ground and then my friends and I all ate it. I came across this photo.

The lovely young fellow goes by the name of Jeff and he's one of the only friends I truly made sophomore year of college but that's a story for another day. Jeff really has nothing to do with this story either; he just also happens to be in the picture.

The point of this story is my smile. In all honesty, I didn't know I would be in this picture. I was just looking at my friend taking a picture of Jeff holding up a beautiful frosting flower. That makes it all the better. How often are real smiles ever captured on camera? We all know it's not that often. It's one of the reasons why I try to take lots of candid pictures.

I don't mean to get even more self-centered and narcissistic with this post, which isn't that much of a leap since this is a blog about my life, but looking at this picture again made me realize that was the night I found out I could pull off an open mouthed smile. My upper and lower teeth are not touching. And it works.

This leads me to believe that my true smile is not a teeth clenched together dealio like people seem to do so often. A great number of people can pull if off as well. Not everyone can pull off the open mouthed smile, though; I've seen my fair share of not so great pictures as evidence.

Reading back what I've just written makes me feel kind of weird. It was just one of those things I kind of noticed and wanted to point out to everyone else; when I look at this picture it's like you can feel how happy I was. That's not something you see with random pictures. Sure, engagement photos and wedding photos you get that, but not in photos you were unaware were being taken.

I should probably just go to sleep . . . But another thing I love about this picture is that Jeff and I are kind of matching. It was completely unplanned, I assure you, but we totally are.