It all began with an itsy-bitsy conversation about Leonardo da Vinci. My beloved Grandmama was not fond about anything that originates south of the Dolomites. She used to tell me that God had a reason for putting those mountain ranges between northern and southern Europe. When it came to art, she preferred artists who were born north of the Alps, such as Rembrandt.

This time we weren’t talking about art, we were talking about SMILES. There was no getting around the fact that Leonardo da Vinci painted the most famous smile, the Mona Lisa smile. Nor did Grandmama see any reason for writing about smiles and, for that matter, taking that topic as an excuse to visit Google.

"There you are. The response is less than .11seconds," she commented. I shook my head and smiled. This time I had Grandmama where I like to put her once in awhile, in that proverbial corner without an exit.

Grandmama was right up to a point. The definition is small. A smile is a facial expression characterized by an upward curving of the mouth, indicating pleasure, amusement or derision. My smile widened to a grin when I pointed out that the definition may have been small, but there were a total of 26,300,000 different websites dealing with that subject.

True, a smile is just another kind of exercise—flexing muscles, so to speak. The similarity ended there.

There is the feedback smile, the pencil-in-your-mouth smile, the mandatory smile, the crocodile smile, and if you happen to be endowed with a face chiseled out of granite, there is a plastic surgeon waiting to endow you with a plastic smile, for the right prize or cause.

Music can entice the lips to form a smile. Those of you who are old enough to remember the Limeliters and their song "Have Some Madeira, My Dear," understand that sort of help-yourself-to-a-smile song.

There are those "funny moment" smiles. The student standing in the hallway that icy winter day, rarely ever smiled. But she smiled as I walked through the door. It became obvious to me that she wasn’t smiling at me. She was smiling at the proverbial person slipping on the proverbial banana peel, except it wasn’t a banana peel. It was a touch of black ice. The person who had slipped was a person well known for her attitude, something akin to arrogance and pride. I shook my head and told the student that the smile was not the right response. But Dana shook her head and explained to me that what had transpired was an act of God. Pride, she explained, always came before the fall. There are people whose attitudes toward other people can precipitate a smile even though misfortune is the cause of it.

Among the many smiles listed with Google is the "Presidential Summit Smile."

I understand that this kind of smile is strictly reserved for politicians. Comedians often mimic that in hopes of earning applause at the expense of someone else.

There is that smile lauded by the local dentist. If you don’t like the local dentist, you can always travel to Kathmando in Nepal. I visited that website out of curiosity.

Children can download a "brushing chart." Being endowed with lots of curiosity, I visited that website as well. That one featured a "Brushing Chart" game. That little side trip is proof positive that spelling demons are alive and well and still amusing. Jay Leno makes good use of that.

Personally, I prefer that single solitary smile destined to disarm an angry frown. I smile because I love the way it makes me feel. That smile spreads like gentle warmth from within until it embraces an entire universe. I suppose my own way of defining that smile is to say that it comes from God and goes to God, and on its trip it spreads the gentle glow of love.

Of course, my friend Gerry Balzer still has another "SMILE." As we walk down the center of the room crowded with people, I feel all the vibrations that fill the room and fear creeps up my spine, Jerry smiles and whispers softly, "Smile, and they’ll wonder what you’re up to." Grandmama silently concurs, and so do all my friends.