If I’m writing something and I’m not feeling mischievous, then I know it’s not going to be great.—Elizabeth Meriwether
Gabriel (2015)
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]One of the most attractive things about faces is their ability to smile. There are as many different kinds of smiles as there are people, but the ones that get my attention the fastest are those who don’t give you those big, toothy smiles, but rather those who just give you a mischievous grin. If you look, you’ll often find a bit of a sparkle in their eye which is indicative of an active mind; one just has to be a bit concerned as to what that activity might entail.
Some faces just have a mischievous look to them. Like any other smile, that grin can stick and people who have worn one for years might as well have, “here comes trouble” painted across their forehead. Not that they are bad people in any way. I think being mischievous is probably a greater sign of intelligence than what one finds on a standardized test form because mischievous people are creative and imaginative first of all. The problem is that their imagination tends to run well outside any box, resulting in actions and behavior than can be surprising.
Mischievous people are important to society because they challenge the boundaries of what we consider normal and conventional. Tell a mischievous child that a given action is unacceptable and watch them perform that action almost immediately. Why? Because they want to see if you were correct or just trying to coerce them into observing a set of rules that, from their perspective, don’t make any sense. So, they do what we would rather they do it, their little faces grinning the entire time.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Gabriel is the youngest of my three sons. I often tell people that he was born mischievous; it is part of his identity. When he was born, the nurses whisked him away to a nearby table to clean him up and check his APGAR scores. Nana, his maternal grandmother, followed along, anxious and excited as nanas tend to be about the arrival of a new grandchild. In her excitement, Nana got a little too close. Pow! Gabriel let’s loose an impressive arc of pee and hits his Nana right in the face. The little guy was less than five minutes old and already showing his personality. Doctors say babies don’t really smile, but I’m pretty sure I saw his first grin that morning.
Mischievous grins can, at times, be difficult to catch. Mischievous people often have a very dry wit and a sense of humor that allows them to deliver sarcasm with a straight face so that one is never really quite sure whether they’re serious or not. The give-away is the quick flash of that grin, the brief sparkle in their eye that lets you know they’re just having fun keeping everyone else on edge.
Society, and parents, tend to be easily frustrated by mischievous people because they are constantly finding uncomfortable ways of showing us our shortcomings. They seem to inherently see behind our façades and then find creative, and often humiliating, ways of calling us out. Yet, whether or not we want to admit it, mischievous challenges are often correct, and that smile is their way of celebrating. Embrace them; they’re smarter than we are.[/one_half_last]