Essay 2 – Alex Terruso

In thinking about what person (real or fictional) I would vote for in this election year because of their smile, the first person to  come to mind was that woman with the iconic smile, Mona Lisa.  She, more than anyone else in history, is defined by her enigmatic smile.  But then I realized that I could never vote for her.  Why?  Because she doesn’t show her teeth.  Can a smile be great without a beautiful set of white teeth?  I think not.  So my thoughts traveled elsewhere, this time to Wonderland.  I imagined myself as Alice, wandering to the polling booth, when a smile appeared to me.  Not a person or an animal, just a smile – a big toothy grin.  And behind these teeth, slowly there appeared a cat, a Cheshire Cat.  “I had often seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat!”  I spoke to the cat, and as he riddled and intrigued me with his philosophical banter, I was mesmerized by his beautiful smile.  As quick as he had come, he disappeared again, his body gradually fading away, leaving only his bright grin.  Those pearly whites would be engrained in my memory forever.  Not a word he had said registered, but is was then that I knew I had to vote for him, the grin without a cat – the Cheshire Cat.  It didn’t matter that he was a Democat, because I wasn’t voting based on his positions or policies.  I was voting for those teeth, the teeth I would get to see on the nightly news, at press conferences and front and center each year at the State of the Union Address.  And who might that be sitting behind him?  Mona Lisa?  That toothless smile just wouldn’t cut it for President, but Vice President?  Perhaps.