Chippy's Smile

I must explain about Chippy's smile. Earlier, I had ended a story with "Did I ever tell you about Chippy's smile? Now...that is another story...."

Evidently, several people wanted to know about Chippy's smile. Now. So, I will tell the tale of the Chippy's smile.

Chippy is a young hispanic CHP officer that, in the previous story, gave us a ride. And, in the previous story, he had given a girl a ticket for rolling through a stop sign. I entered the car after that point. As before, I was sitting sandwiched between two guys, when Chippy decided to pull a vehicle over for speeding. Chippy got out of the CHP car and walked over to the passenger window and began asking the driver the usual questions. After he asked each question, he would quickly glance back at us, sitting in the car.

"Watch for the smile...he's gonna smile...ya just...gotta...look close!!!!" One of the guys had said. We all laughed, and watched intently for Chippy to smile.

Not blinking for five minutes can really dry your eyes out.

Just as I was about to blink, Chippy looked at us again, and flashed...the smile. The best way to descibe Chippy's smile is to reference The Great Leslie (played by Tony Curtis) in The Great Race: Every time The Great Leslie smiles, he shows all his teeth, and either his eyes or his teeth actually sparkle. And I mean sparkle as in, you aren't going to miss the sparkle. The glint fills the whole screen. That is exactly what Chippy's smile looked like. We laughed so hard that the car shook.

While Chippy may have a good-guy smile, he definately has the bad guy's theme music. Not because he is bad, but because things seem to happen to him and his company that are quite reminisent of what happens to Professor Fate and Max (Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk, respectively) when they try a new scheme to do something to, before, better, or faster than The Great Leslie. The cool thing is that Chippy doesn't yell "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax!!!!" when something goes wrong. He goes out and solves it.

But back to Chippy's smile. We were almost at our destination when he found out that there was a car crash up the street a bit. Being a good CHP officer, he had to go and check it out. He had been "working the scene" for about twenty minutes when another officer showed up. The guy that had told us to watch for the smile decided that CHP officers must have a secret handshake or something.

"I'm telling you, they gotta!!! Watch Chippy carefully, and I'll watch the other guy. They have some sort of secret code or handshake that they use."

We all watched dutifully for a few minutes. Suddenly, the guy yelled "That's it!!!" when Chippy and his co-worker were about twenty feet apart. At that distance, they couldn't have reached to use a secret handshake, and neither of them had said anything.

But they smiled. They smiled that huge Great Leslie smile. There were the teeth, there was the glint. I don't think any of us will be able to convince that guy that it isn't a secret code. He's probably standing in front of his mirror right now practicing The Great Leslie smile. But I don't think he'll ever get the glint The Great Leslie had or the sparkle Chippy's smile had, dispite all the whitening strips in the world.

For he is not The Great Leslie, nor is he our beloved Chippy.

On the note of the Featured Movie, The Great Race:
The Great Race is a wonderful movie, even though it is old. It goes a little flat in the last minute, but after you think about it, it is pretty good. The movie has so much humor, it will make your stomach hurt and your lungs collapse, especially concerning Prof. Fate and Max. The movie doesn't have any bad content (meaning graphic scenes or gratuitous vulgarity), and any violence is purely humorous (their is a huge pie fight that is to die for, it is so funny). Even the bar fight in Boracho (Spanish for "drunk") is quite humorous. I consider this a good family movie. To note, the heroine does at a few points wear the 1906 version of "skimmpy" clothing.

With that said,

"Push the button, Max!"