Facial Gestures
We’ve all been in that awkward situation. Walking down the hallway at school when the most attractive guy in the whole place walks past you and winks at you. What do you do? Wink back of course. You have a silent personal breakdown inside and then you quickly look around to make sure it was you who he was winking at. Nope of course it wasn’t. It was, according to the latest gossip, his girlfriend, who was coincidently walking right behind you. Great.

Out of all of his 80 muscles in his face that he could have used to make over 7,000 expressions to display to me… I mean his girlfriend… he had to use his orbicularis oculi to quickly twitch just one eye very flirtatiously, commonly referred to as winking.

The next day. Same situation. Ok, now just don’t make any eye contact and everything will be a-ok. O great I looked.

He didn’t wink at me! He glared at someone walking behind me, or was it me? I swiftly turn around in a circle (I should probably be a ballerina now) to see who it was but there is strangely not a single person to be found… a coincidence? Lets go with that. Great, now not only is he totally alarmed and weirded out, but he probably thinks I’m trying to impress him with my ballerina skills. I’ll just be going on my way now.

Communication is the key ingredient to living our everyday lives, but some forms of communication make it pretty hard to even walk down the hallway without sacrificing your dignity and self-worth. These scenarios take place because of the misreading of facial expressions. The earliest humans used hand and facial gestures to communicate their needs and now today, we still do that but for different reasons such as conveying emotions like fury or exuberance or trying to catch someone’s attention by that oh so captivating ;)

Now these occurrences aren’t annoying, ridiculous, or even bewildering, to an extent that is. However, when people wink so much that it looks like they have some problem where their eye constantly twitches every five seconds, that’s a little much. Or that one ‘Debby-Downer’, who has that permanent smirk on her face because she loathes everyone on the planet, cheer up man. At least your face wasn’t permanently made that way like the Joker in Batman, actually it probably was. Maybe you will be famous one day too!

These occurrences can be very misleading. That one guy who sends you a winky face practically every other word, isn’t trying to hint at anything. You confess your love to him after the hundredth winky face has been sent (it is a cause for celebration of course) just to get shot down. Gosh darn it; I should’ve ignored the frequent electronic eye twitches! Or yet another occurrence when that one person who you thought disliked you very strongly keeps smiling at you, when in reality, they are plotting your murder.

Why the human race engages in this strange behavior is simple. People do it to display his or her emotions for the whole world to see and try to decipher. While winking at your loved one, glaring at your enemy, or giving “the look” when you and you best friend are communicating through telepathy, are all great ways to communicate, they can be totally misread by an outsider or even the person who was intended to receive your “sign.” That wink could be seen by your secret admirer and give the totally wrong message, the glare could be seen by a teacher who already didn’t like you in the first place, and that message you are sending via telepathy, could get jumbled up in the nonexistent wires connecting you and your amigo’s brains.

So next time you are walking down the Hallway and you get a wink or glare or a smirk, please don’t wink back, (even though you have been practicing it in the mirror for hours to use at just the right moment) or show off your secret ballerina skills. Save the mortification, humiliation, awkwardness, self-consciousness, and discomfort for a different time.