I really do love smiling at people when I pass them in the street.
Not in a mad-grin-plastered-on-my-face kind of way that makes me look like a goon, but if I’m walking along and catch someone’s eye, to give them a big smile makes me feel really happy. It is also quite fun to see their reaction. Some look away embarrassed, some pretend to not have noticed, and some smile back.
Try it today, it’s fun 
I like doing this too. I didn’t realize how much I liked doing this until a few months ago when I got a bad sore in my mouth that prevented me from being able to smile. I felt so frustrated being unable to smile at random strangers.
I don’t mind clean, attractive people smiling at me briefly.
Otherwise it slightly unsettles me…
Smiling is contagious. I was recently at the grocery store to pick up a few items, and in the checkout lane, I noticed the clerk and the bagger both looking at their hands and kinda glum. When they looked up at me, I smiled and simply said “Hi, how are you?”, and from there, they both started smiling. It made me feel good to see the change in them just from a friendly smile. :)
It weirds me out to go to big Northern cities because they don’t make eye contact with other people and they don’t smile. Even in the big cities Southerners smile.
I used to do this out of friendliness but it seems now that anytime I make brief eye contact with a complete random it seems they take it differently… as if I want to start shit or something. I don’t get it. I guess everyone has a bit of piss in their coffee these days.
If I catch a child looking at me, I always smile, If they smile back, I wave. If they wave back, I do a big grin and a really fast, long wave. Sometimes I get a laugh.
Adults I give a vague smile and nod.
I’m from Los Angeles where nobody makes nice or smiles at all. If a stranger smiles at you, run; the person is either going stab you, try to sell you some shit, or ask for your phone number. Of course, you don’t even have to see the person for your phone number to be demanded. You may very well be yelled at from across the street, or a moving vehicle until you’re out of ear shot, or you threaten to smash the sonofabitch’s face in.
I miss that place.
Here in Minneapolis, strangers smile and say hello all the time, and it is all very bizarre. Even the cops out here are friendly. I still think it’s all a trick.
Ha ha, this is true. As a native New Yorker, I moved to Baltimore for two years and can still remember feeling weirded out as I walked down the city streets and strangers passing by in the other direction smiled, nodded and said “Hello”. There were many fewer people in the streets than I was used to, too, which put together made me nervous.
The first time, I wondered if this guy knew me from somewhere, so I nodded back and smiled. He didn’t say or do anything else, though, so I kept walking, a little confused. The second time (a block or so later), two guys walking together both gave me direct eye contact and a smile and “hello”. I am a little ashamed to recall that my first reaction was to dart a quick look behind me, as my immediate instinct was that this was a distraction ploy to take my attention away from flankers coming up in the rear, before managing to mumble a cautious “hi” back to them as they passed by.
I say “a little ashamed” because my instincts have saved me before: I was once corralled/flanked in just this way before (one smiling stranger striking up a random friendly conversation while glancing around to his sides and behind me), in the Pre-Disney Times Square area, escaping a mugging only by ducking into a brightly lit porn shop, then darting out in front of an empty taxicab, almost getting hit, and quickly climbing in.
But no, they were just being Southern I suppose. Once my nerves calmed down I found it charming. But since Baltimore is a hotbed of crime, I never felt fully at ease with the whole thing.
I don’t know about that - happens all the time in and around Chicago.
That’s the great thing about living in a big northeastern city. When you make a point of smiling at and saying hi to complete strangers, it totally disrupts their circuits and (I hope) makes their day a little brighter.
I don’t know about that. Paris is very much frown-city, and when I was a kid I sometimes said a cheery “hi !” to random people on the streets. Confused them to no end, and some actually took a step back, looking at me like I was some kind of dangerous freak. Others would look at me like I was an interesting insect on a slab.
I did, however, have one wonderful experience in a subway tunnel one day. I was in a good mood and softly singing along to “Dream a Little Dream of Me” on my cd player, then some lady started singing along. I looked around puzzled, caught her eye and we just smiled at each other for a fraction of a second, then went about on our ways. Made me all fuzzy for the rest of the day :).
See, this is my problem. I -do- like to smile at folks, but I’m very self-conscious about my appearance, and thus I often second-guess and say, “Hrm. If I smile, will I make them feel unsettled?”
It’s annoying. 
I smile at strangers all the time. Makes me feel good.
I also love to smile or just do eye-contact-and-nod at other joggers when I’m out running. There’s a great feeling of camaraderie.
You and Jim Gaffigan:
I went to a smaller, extremely tight knit university in the south for undergrad (Baylor). A lot of the kids came from somewhat similar backgrounds, raised with roughly the same values, etc. Friendliest damn campus you could possibly imagine. To not have greeted everyone you encountered would have been the exception, not the norm. It was a great environment and you couldn’t help but have literally thousands and thousands of friends. Heh, it took several years out in the streets of Dallas, New York, Chicago and San Fran to get past the inclination to greet everyone with a smile and a cheery “hello.” That’s what’s nice about our neighborhood greenbelts again now. I can do it again and nine times out of ten I’ll get the same reply, or a least a pleasantly astonished “Err… hello to you too.”