March 29 - Funny Faces

Michael took a seat on the subway facing a mom, a dad, and their little girl. While the mom and dad talked, their little girl--probably about two years old-- sat on her mom's lap and gazed vacantly across the aisle. Sitting next to the family was an attractive woman in a business suit who looked up at Michael briefly and then returned to her Blackberry, the faintest trace of a smile visible on her face.
Michael put his paper aside and glanced at the woman in the suit who glanced back. Figuring he would win her over by getting the little girl across the aisle to laugh, he smiled and waved at the little girl, but the little girl didn't respond.
The mom and dad continued talking and the little girl continued staring into the distance. It was like she was watching a cartoon or a video game that only she could see. Michael smiled again and stuck his tongue out at her, and when she didn't flinch he upgraded to peek-a-boo. The woman in the suit caught a glimpse of him and smiled more openly, but there was still nothing from the little girl, although her mom flashed him a perfunctory half smile as if to say, OK. Efforts acknowledged. You can go back to your paper now before returning to her conversation with her husband.
But it wasn't the mom's acknowledgement Michael wanted, it was her daughter's--and through hers, the woman's. Besides, now he was committed to the project, and if smiles and peek-a-boo didn't get him anything, he would have to break out the big guns: funny faces. He put his palms on the side of his face and stretched his mouth and his eyes so that they were slants.
Nothing.
He pinched his eyelids and cheeks and scrunched his face up with buckteeth.
Nope.
He stuck his bottom lip out, put his hands on both sides of his face and pulled down.
Not so much as a blink.
The woman in the suit glanced his way again to see how he took the lack of reaction. Cut bait and call it a nice effort? No way. He wasn't going to back down, not until he got something from her, and if he had to use the nuclear option, he was prepared to do that: Funny faces with sound effects.
Sneaking a quick look at the woman in the suit, he went through the same faces he'd made at the little girl before and added cartoonish boogity-oogity voices to them and finally, finally the girl responded. Her eyes and nose scrunched up in what looked like a precursor to laughter before she buried her face in her mother's arms and cried.
Michael was taken aback. The woman in the suit and several other passengers looked at him to see what he had done and he recoiled in shock.
"Hey asshole," her father mouthed at him. "She's blind, OK?"
The woman in the suit rolled her eyes and texted her boyfriend while the girl sobbed in her mother's arms and Michael prayed for the train to hurry up and get to its next stop.