Weird Lips

I get a lot of comments about my very strange picture on top of my blog. It shows me with a very wild look and screwed up mouth. I think it almost looks like someone from “The Simpsons“. I thought maybe I would explain it for those who don’t like it or think it doesn’t represent me well.

I’m a real sucker for sappy, tear-jerking movies. Back in the seventies, The Other Side of the Mountain was released.  It was the true story of Olympic-hopeful skier, Jill Kinmont. Her chances were cut off by an accident that left her a quadriplegic.

At one moment in the film, Kinmont, played by Marilyn Hasset, makes this face where she pushes up one corner of her lips upward and the opposite down. I wondered if I could do it, so I tried.

It becames one of my favorite faces to make. A few years later, my family was visiting another very serious family. I was playing with the children and taught the other family’s kids how to do “weird lips”. They showed their mother and she was furious. She forbade them to ever do it. She warned me not to encourage them. I still like doing weird lips for kids. Most mothers think it is funny.

I’m currently a social worker teaching life skills to developmentally disabled adults. I do this work “in the trenches”, meaning I’m in the community with them rather than in a stuffy office.  One day, I was driving a client somewhere. He had a camera phone. He wanted to take my picture. He took one that was me with my normal face. It wasn’t very interesting.

Then he asked me to make that funny face he had seen me do. I obliged him with another rendition of Weird Lips. He snapped the picture at just the right moment. It turned out great. For his encouragement and because it’s better than some stuffy picture of me in a suit, I promised him I would put it on my blog.