My Favourite?
Written by: Carol Harrison; Carol’s Corner
Happy Faces 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀
I like to add emojis to messages, especially with family and close friends. They convey more than words alone, equivalent to facial expressions and body language in a face-to-face conversation. My favourite one is the smiley face. I know there are many with different eyes to go with the smiles but if I must pick a favourite, at least for this post, it is the basic bright yellow emoji with its huge smile and round dot eyes.
A smiley face emoji 😀 fits well with how important I believe a smile to be. Smiles put people at ease. They brighten the world on dark days and add to the joy of a moment. They lift our spirits and allow for an attitude adjustment. I like my smile even when I might not like other things about myself. People have told me they appreciate how often I smile. With all the emphasis on smiles in my life, it is no wonder I like the smiling emoji.
As much as I believe smiles are important (including emojis to show through written words what people cannot see on our faces), there is also a story of why smiley faces are my favourite. Long before the existence of email or any other electronic messaging to link us together, I liked smiley face symbols. I loved to doodle on whatever paper happened to be handy – my school notes, letters I wrote infrequently or a scrap of paper I used for a bookmark. Plain paper now had decorations. My mindless doodling helped pass the time too.
Back in those dark ages long ago I loved to hang out with friends. I could talk to them with ease but as we grew up and moved apart, I found it difficult to keep in touch. Long distance phone calls to hear their voices were too costly to consider. Letter writing was not my forte. I realized shyness held me back from making new friends easily. However, one thing that stayed consistent was my doodles on paper.
I dated a young man before distance separated us. He continued his university education while I went to northern Saskatchewan to teach. Mail arrived and left the community once a week by plane. No phones existed except a radio phone – expensive to use when it worked and anything you said could be heard by anyone listening in across the north.
I bought pretty purple stationary and every week I had a letter in the outgoing mail to my boyfriend whom I have now been married to for almost forty-five years. Each letter, multiple pages long, always included a smiley face drawn in pen by my signature. 🙂Just a simple circle with dots for eyes and a huge grin fixed in place. Sometimes I even decorated the envelope with another smiley face.🙂
Even now, if I leave him a note which never happens too often, I will add a hand-drawn smiley face. I add the emoji to my texts with him. Of course, with such a variety of these fun, emotion-generating characters, I no longer need to limit myself to the basics. He receives hearts, hugs, kisses and winks at times too.🥰
Adding these depictions of various emotions adds depth to messages. Sometimes an emoji makes up the entire message to a friend or family member, for pictures say more than words we think of to express how we feel at that moment. As a writer, I know the importance of choosing great words as a means to convey our thoughts, feelings and stories. As a storyteller, facial expressions add dimension to our words, as do emojis.😀😌🙂
Go ahead and brighten your own day and others’ as well. Tell stories and smile a lot. Decorate your paper and letters with hand-drawn smiley faces. Use those vibrant yellow smiling faces of emojis with whatever eye shapes you want. Wide eyes, 😃winks, 😉hearts bulging out 😍or big round black dots, 😀 make it fit the person you are sending it to and enjoy. Smile and the world smiles with you.
