Smiling To My Death

The other night I was driving to pick up Top Ender from the Brownies meeting she helps out at. It was a beautiful evening, and the way I had gone had meant that there was little traffic on the route however as I pulled up to a roundabout I saw that there was a big lorry to my right and so I stopped and watched as the Lorry driver drove across the roundabout.

I was smiling. Not at the Lorry Driver, not because I had heard something funny on the radio, or because they were playing a song I liked, not even because it was a lovely evening and I was on the way to pick up my favourite daughter.

No, I was smiling because I'm a smiley person. It was something that I taught myself as a teenager, to always have a grin on my face (but not a wide eyed staring grin, because that just freaks people out) and it's sort of stuck because I did it so much.

Smiley Pippa

Or maybe my Mum was right and the wind changed and now I'm stuck like this.

Anyhoo.

The Lorry driver spotted me sitting in my car at the roundabout, smiling in his general direction and did a quick double take, as if to see if I was smiling at him or I was someone he knew that was smiling at him, or maybe because he thought;

Wow! What a hot looking woman that is!


Yeah, I didn't think it was that last one either.

The problem was, that the double take wasn't really that quick and the Lorry driver and I locked eyes. A cheery smile came over his face and we both sat in our respective vehicles smiling at each other.

Which is when I realised that the Lorry was no longer going straight across the roundabout as it had originally intended to do based upon the lane the Lorry was in when it approached the roundabout. No, this lorry with the grinning driver was now headed straight for me.

I was smiling to my death.

The Lorry Driver recognised at the same moment I did that he was drifting towards me and quickly straightened up the lorry, and gave me a little grin over his shoulder as he drove past me, correcting his course and heading off in the direction he was intending to.

The whole situation probably only lasted a second, but I learnt my lesson though, never ever smile at a roundabout!