An Unfortunate Face

A recurring memory of my 15-year-old self, hanging out with some nerdy peers at lunch time in the school quadrangle.

Deputy Principal approaches us. “Why are you boys slouching around here when you could be kicking a football on the oval? And, Ryle, what are you smiling at?”

Me: “I’m not smiling, sir!”

Deputy Principal: “You were born with a most unfortunate face then!”

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Since then, I have generally presented an “unfortunate face” to authority that I intuitively perceive to lack authenticity. Clearly my visage rattled the deputy principal, who mistook my anxious “go to” teenage defense mechanism as defiance.

My unfortunate face unbalanced the Boss’s mate poking fun at the eruption of a “lighthouse” pimple on my adolescent forehead. “At least I’m mature enough to have developed to this stage, unlike some,” I retorted. This was unacceptable behaviour from an underling, but it was worth being “counseled” later that day.

An official leaked to us that he had been instructed to “sit on the heads” of the team I was working with. My unfortunate face retorted, “That’s alright, we’ll just put on our sharp pointy hats!”

My church once went to the licensing court to oppose the granting of a liquor license to a nearby servo chain. The servo lawyer objected to our presence as he deemed a church to be concerned only with “more heavenly matters.” Our unfortunate faces presented our church constitution that expected us to address social justice matters.

I was involved in assisting and advocating for misplaced people who had suddenly become vulnerable to Australia’s reversal of refugee resettlement policies. Dumped in the street with nowhere to go they needed help, and we gave it. The Amnesty badge wearing Minister for Immigration declared my unfortunate face “un-Australian.”

These are just a few instances over decades of my unfortunate face disturbing those who gaze upon it. Oddly, others don’t seem to mind it! My unfortunate face is allegedly retired now. It still remains the only face I have to look out at the world from. Unfortunate as it is, it continues to serve me well.

I take comfort from another “unfortunate face,” my lifelong mentor, guide and inspiration to whom my life is devoted, and who “had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him.” Isaiah 53:2