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"Why aren't you smiling?"

"I am smiling, Mom." I smiled my best and pointed to my mouth. "This is it... see?"

"Don't be fresh. You call that a smile?"

You may never have had this problem, but I have been in that conversation, or some variation of it, ever since my mother urged me to look happy when I said hello to Auntie Mabel -- or anyone else, for that matter. I didn't much care back then, but these many years later, I finally decided it was time to improve my greeting grin.

Before I could start, however, I felt that a late, but necessary, self-assessment was in order. This required a dopey session in the bathroom, closing the door, and smiling into the mirror. That confirmed -- as if I needed it -- that I am not a good smiler. I never do teeth, for instance, but not because of the self-consciousness of a teenager with braces on his teeth. I am simply not capable of a satisfactory wide, toothy grin like a Halloween pumpkin or Julia Roberts. I experimented with a big smile like that once when the kids were small, and it scared them.

I smile and laugh easily enough, teeth and all, enjoying banter with wife, kids, or friends, or watching a Leno monologue when he's having a good day, or breaking up over a friend's joke about a talking dog. It was just my social smile that needed work. Let's be blunt: the fake smile. The Auntie Mabel smile. The phony kind practiced by politicians and flight attendants.

I know that a smile -- genuine or not -- is an essential social launching pad. Apparently, it makes everyone, including the perpetrator, feel warm and socially connected. A "smile and the world smiles with you" kind of thing. I had a vision of walking down a crowded Broadway grinning happily at everyone and seeing the world smile back at me like a river of smiley-face balloons flowing down the sidewalk toward me and parting to let me pass. Sounds kind of scary if you ask me. Stephen King could work with that concept.

No, I decided the best way to test my hopeful new social skill was to try a one-on-one smile situation, say in a long corridor at work. I lurked by a bulletin board one morning until I saw someone -- it was Ted from Personnel, someone I didn't know well -- striding down the hallway toward me, a folder in one hand and a container of cafeteria coffee in the other.

I walked briskly toward him and calculated the timing -- OK, prepare to smile... not yet... not yet... now! -- smile! But Ted didn't smile back. He saw me but just kept walking to his meeting. Probably too engrossed in thinking about his PowerPoints to respond to my greeting. Same reaction from Al the marketing guy and Elise from Accounting. Also my boss, but at least he nodded. There is no such thing as a fake nod, but if there were, that was it.

Was my smile inadequate? Fake looking? After all, it was fake.

Experts say that pretend smiles are difficult to pull off because a real smile is automatic, not planned. True smiles involve contractions of both face and eye muscles, while fake smiles involve mostly face muscles.

When I read this, it seemed to me that learning to involve my eye muscles in a smile was just a matter of practice, which lead to more dopiness in front of my bathroom mirror.

Reading smiles is a skill we probably acquired through evolution. Thousands of years ago, early humans lived in groups, which was a critical survival strategy. If you weren't part of a group, who could you turn to for help in running down that antelope for dinner? So humans had to become skilled at reading facial expressions to distinguish fake smiles -- yes, even then -- from real ones.

Then they could figure out whether they were solid members of the in-group or should cozy up to the chief a bit more. Or maybe throw an extra bear skin into their kit just in case they will need it to keep warm during those long nights alone out on the grass.

Nevertheless, I have been getting better at the fake smile -- picking my times -- smiling at the Starbuck's kid, say, or Ted at the office, the dry-cleaning lady, or the mailman on those occasional days he shows up before dark. And they do smile back. And there is a contact. Maybe it's my training in the mirror. Or maybe my smile isn't as fake as I thought.

Bernard Jacks is a freelance humor writer who lives in Marlboro. His columns have appeared in the N.Y. Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications.