A Little Bit Of Nothing

Be Happy. Smile! 

It was a simple message that I wanted to spread to the streets of Boston. I didn’t need anything back from people, I just wanted to make sure they knew that they didn’t have to frown. So when I first got on that T line with my two friends, I had a smile on my face. Our first encounters with people was on the T. There was a small group of friends sitting across from us and I couldn’t help but notice that the kept on staring at my sign. It started with one boy on the end. He stared down at the sign and a big smile grew on his face. “Hey guys, look at that sign.” It quickly spread down their line of friends. For the rest of the train ride, they kept glancing back at my sign, as if to see it was still there. Their smiles were most definitely helpful. I felt a little more confident in my project.

After finally arriving in Boston, my friends Sarah and Meghan decided that they needed coffee. While they stopped in Starbucks, I decided to walk down Newbury St. The first person I encountered was a fireman on his break. He and a few of his buddies were standing outside of Starbucks, just hanging out and talking, sipping on their coffee. “Hey, that’s a great sign!” one of the man shouted towards me. “What are you up to?” Now normally, a strange tattooed man would make be feel uncomfortable, but this wasn’t a normal situation. After I explained what I was doing, he most definitely was appreciative. “Why can’t kids do this more often?!” I think of all the people I met that day, he showed the most interest in what I was doing. 

While walking down Newbury St. I most definitely got a myriad of different reactions. Some would smile, some would say, “Nice sign!” Others would just walk right past me. I noticed that young girls my age would be hypercritical towards me, they would look me up and down and scrutinize my sign. Young men would show a little more interest then need be. While thinking about all these reactions, I didn’t notice that I had stopped smiling for just a moment. “Well you’re not smiling, why should I?” a woman said to me as she walked by. I guess she was right, if was going to do this project I had to go all in. But smiling for five hours strait is really hard, it most definitely hurts after a while.

The second faze of the project was to sing. The three of us headed to the Boston Gardens where we felt we would have the most success. The only problem is, we didn’t have a permit to street perform so we were not allowed to take the spot of someone who did have it, and we also had to make sure we moved frequently. Most of the people smiled a lot. We got a lot of appreciative claps. Some people would stop to watch or sing along to our songs. One thing I did notice is that I most definitely have to edit my song choices. If we sang any song that was remotely religious, our fans would disperse, not wanting to hear us “preach” even though we were far from doing that. A group of teenagers passed by us and teased, and a pair of Asian tourists asked to take pictures with us. It was mainly interesting to just see all of the people smiling slightly as they walked away from us. 

After five hours of walking, smiling , and singing, I was most definitely exhausted but it was pretty rewarding. I got the information that I needed and was able to fix all of the problems for next time we go out. Meghan and Sarah had so much fun, they’ve decided to be my accomplices. We plan to go out next weekend to do it again, with new songs and a new place to go.