Angry Resting Face

I need to come clean on something.  I suffer from a condition that until recently I didn’t know had a name until a friend of mine named it and claimed to be a fellow sufferer.  It is called “Angry Resting Face.”  (Feel free to replace the word ‘angry’ with the descriptor of your choice.  The one suggested to me was considerably less family friendly.)  Apparently, when I am not struck by any particular kind of emotion, or aware of the things that my facial muscles are doing, the default position of my facial demeanor is angry looking.  My mouth, when slack, curves downward, making it look like I am frowning.  My eyes are naturally rather small (though not, I think, beady) and when I am not making an effort to keep them open they appear to be narrowed into little slits.  The fact that as I age my eyelids are doing their best to droop down further and further over my eyes does not help this situation.  

If I am Deep In Thought, it is much worse.  Like some people might squint their eyes in order to better focus their sight on something, apparently I squint my eyebrows in order to better focus my brain on something.  They nudge themselves together, resulting in the typical cartoon downward-and-inward slant of someone trying to execute her plot to take over the world.  (Seriously, though.  If I did take over the world, wouldn’t it be a much better place?)  The wrinkles this eyebrow slanting creates on my forehead and between my eyes only heightens the effect.  My unibrow, which is usually but not always tamed by painful waxing, can send the look over the edge.

As a lawyer, this can sometimes work to my advantage.  When I am in the courtroom, I am thinking constantly, and so my inadvertent game face has gotten me called a number of mean things that work in my favor when doing battle.  Image can be everything.  Don’t mess with me, this face says: I will hurt you and possibly slash the tires of your car if you do.  Although what I am probably thinking is, “Oooh!  Chik-Fil-A just came out with Peppermint Milkshakes!”

People who only know me in the courtroom, then, don’t really know me at all.  Many years ago, when my children were little bitties, I was talking in the hallway of a Courthouse about something especially cute my especially cute children did.  One of the Courtroom deputies standing nearby heard me, and looked me deep in the eyes as if she were trying to take measure of my soul.  “You have kids?” she asked as if she were asking me about my third head.

“Yes,” I said, immediately jumping from lawyer mode to gushing mommy mode, extolling the virtues of the world’s most perfect, adorable, and intelligent babies.

She looked at me with her jaw hung low.  The same “what rabbit hole have I fallen down?” look she would have given her dog if it had suddenly asked her the square root of 2209.  (The answer is 47, by the way.  The calculator told me, not the dog.)  “You have kids,” she said slowly, testing the words for accuracy as they came out of her mouth.  “Huh.  I would have thought you were too mean to have children.”

I alternatively think this is hilarious and sad.  It explains some social problems I had when I was in school.  The first time I ever became aware of it I was a senior high school, and a boy whose social status was far higher than mine informed me that people were scared of me.  Given that, at the time, I was scared of almost everyone and everything in a social setting, I was flabbergasted.  “Why?”  I asked.  “Because people are afraid you are going to bite their heads off if they say something wrong.”  

Ok, I admit to having some revenge fantasies about biting people’s heads off if they say something especially stupid, but I would never ever in a thousand years do it.  I think of myself as a pretty even keeled person, who is quick to laugh, slow to anger, and is always looking to make a joke.  I probably don’t take most things seriously enough.  Frankly, I think that in addition to Angry Resting Face that I also suffer from Pseudobulbar Affect which is a real, live, actual, and true neurological condition which occurs in 11% of the people who have the other neurological condition I have actually been diagnosed by a real doctor with, Essential Tremor.  Anyway, one of the main symptoms of Pseudobulbar Affect is that you laugh uncontrollably in inappropriate situations.  Ummmmmm, guilty.

In the meantime, I will use my Angry Resting Face to my advantage when I can.  Maybe I’ll start a foundation and have a telethon featuring some actor with an angry looking face who is actually very funny in real life.  (Christopher Walken?  Clint Eastwood?  Robert DiNiro?)  We’ll sell those rubber bracelets in some angry looking swirl of colors like black, red, and puke green, with a slogan like, “Angry Face = Happy Heart.”  We can have Angry Resting Face Awareness week in elementary schools and booths at craft fairs where we sell pastries that look disgusting but taste delicious.  The possibilities are endless.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to practice smiling in the mirror.  I’m volunteering at the elementary school next week, and I don’t want to scare anyone off.