Your Smile Made My Night

Tonight as I drove home from visiting my mother in her new apartment, I got off the freeway, halted at a stoplight and started to turn my head to talk to my daughter as she babbled about red meaning stop, but paused as my eyes came across a guy staring at me from the backseat of the car in the next lane. As quickly as I stopped, I finished my turn and began to entertain my daughter with stoplight thoughts. Moments later I heard a muted honk, as if from someone only barely pushing the horn. I looked over in the honk's direction, and this time took in the four occupants, young, handsome Hispanic males most likely in their late teens, who were all looking at me with cheesy grins on their faces. The driver lifted his arm in a wave and his chin in greeting. The guy from the backseat shook his head and bowed it down. I nodded and smiled at them and went back to talking to Bubba, though I couldn't help the smile that remained on my face as I glowed with that glow that moms get when they are honked at with a nearly three year old child in the back seat of their Durango. It doesn't matter that the hair is tied in a loose bun and the makeup is nonexistent or even that the car is most likely filled with jail bait. The smiles, the honk and the wave are enough to make any mom's day.

Oh yeah and the girls that pulled up between our cars at the next stoplight in time to witness the guys' parting honk and wave were like the icing on the cake as they peered into my car to see who had captured the guys' attention. When I noticed them gulping from beer bottles and following me to my apartment complex, I grew a tad nervous, however they merely paused then roared away.

Perhaps I should have called the cops, but the bottles could have been Thomas Kemper rootbeer, and maybe they meant to go the same way I had.

Anyway, it was an interesting night. And I think that the cute, little guy from the back seat's smile will stay with me for a while. I hope they have fun tonight and don't get into any trouble, which they shouldn't if they avoid the likes of my beer-guzzling stalkers.