December 18, 2006 2:16am

Someone today told me that I should smile more. How does this look?

When I was a kid, I never showed my teeth when I smiled. The reason is because when I was in kindergarden, we got pictures taken at school and my grandmother didn't like how mine came out.

She didn't like them because my teeth were showing in the picture and she thought the pictures could be better. We went back to the photographer and he redid them. She even showed him a picture of me (taken by a photographer) from when I was 3. No teeth showing, but it was one of those smile/giggle smiles that you can really only do well when you're little.

I remember on our way over to the photographer, she reminded me over and over not to show my teeth in the picture. She made me practice a few times before we went just how I was going to smile.

The photographer didn't understand what was "wrong" with the pictures, but he retook them anyway. He kept telling me to smile bigger, but I was scared to because my grandmother was standing right there watching.

I had new, toothless pictures taken and all was well with the world.

Forever and ever after that, I always thought that teeth should not be shown in pictures. In fact, I thought they shouldn't be shown at all. Add to that the fact that I was very self conscious about the gap between my two front teeth. Whenever I smiled, I was always careful to keep my teeth covered. Sometimes I would slip up and smile really big, but then I'd remember the "no teeth" rule and retract it a bit.

But today, someone told me I should smile more often.

So here it is. What do ya think?