A father and son sit at a table in a busy coffee shop. The father is wearing a suit and has a folio of papers opened in front of him on the tiny table. His attention is divided between the screen of his smartphone and the papers on the table. His son is twelve years old, kicking at the leg of his chair with his heel, flipping a baseball around in his hands, and looking completely bored.

A pretty, confident young woman in a yoga outfit walks past their table with her coffee in hand. She stops at the milk and sugar table to adjust her coffee. The father looks up and spends a moment on her, then sees his son looking too and watches him instead. He smiles and quietly says, “Hey… three second rule.” The son snaps to and his face turns red as he stares down at the floor.

The father laughs to himself and looks around at the people sitting close by. He decides the people nearby would understand and, as the woman backs out the door with her coffee in one hand and phone in the other, he closes the folio and puts his phone in his pocket. Taking one last look around he says in a low tone, “Hey,.. it’s alright. You did nothing wrong. I’ve never told you about the Three Second Rule, have I?” The son bashfully shakes his head.

“Alright.” The father puts his arm on the back of his son’s chair, thinks a moment, and then leans over. “It’s like this. It is perfectly normal and healthy for a person to admire the beauty of another person. It was perfectly normal and healthy for you to look at that woman, but there are rules for doing it properly. First, and foremost, there is the rule of Discretion. It is important to always be as discreet as possible; like being a fly on the wall. It is best if no one notices at all, and if that is not possible… then we do not look at all. So, after that, there are rules that help achieve discretion. One is the Three Second Rule; never look for more than three seconds. Looking more than three seconds draws attention to you, which often ends bad in various ways.”

“Like how?”

“Well, when other people see you they might get the wrong idea and then say and do things that you never intended to be the result of you simply admiring a pretty woman. Like, if you friends saw you looking and started making jokes about you, or loud comments about her. Or, if another woman saw you and started to chastise you for it. Which all leads to another rule: never try to include others in what you are looking at. No making a face. No making comments, whistles, or noises. And no making gestures in any way. Telling your friends completely destroys any hope of being discreet, and you cannot control or predict how they will behave.”

“What if my friends point a girl out to me?”

“Then it is your responsibility to remind your friends to be more respectful. Do you know why discretion is so important?” The son shakes his head. “It’s because we don’t want to ruin the thing that we are admiring. A huge part of what makes a person so beautiful is their confidence. It’s kind of like that elk we saw last year on our vacation out in Colorado. What did we do?”

“We hid behind a rock so we wouldn’t scare it away.”

“That’s right. Only, in this situation here, the woman is the forest and her confidence is the elk. That forest we were in was beautiful, no? But it was a million times better with the elk there,.. right? The same is true with people and confidence.”

“What if she catches you looking anyway?”

“Yes. That does happen. Then you just give her a quick soft smile that tells her that you think she’s pretty but mean her no ill will and go back to your business.”

The son lets out a quick laugh, “How do I say all that with a quick smile?”

The father says jokingly, “Hasn’t your mother told you how smiles work?” The son shakes his head. “Oh. Well. We’ll need to have a talk with her then. Smiles are how we share what in our heart, and there is nothing we can do to control that. If we hate someone and smile at them, no matter how hard we try to fake it, they will know we hate them… if they’re paying attention… a lot of people don’t know how to read smiles… but that’s not our fault.”

The son replies mockingly exasperated, “So, you’re saying I don’t need to do anything at all; just smile. Why don’t you just say that?”

The father shows seriousness, “Because you need to know how it works. As you get older, it might not always be so obvious. If you smile at a girl and she reacts in a way that you don’t understand, you need to know where to look. It could be that the girl is just weird, or dealing with something of her own, but you have to look at your own heart first to make sure your intentions and feelings are in the right place before you can dismiss her as being odd. Does that make sense?” The son gave a nod.

The father sits upright and says, “Alright. We have to go, but if you ever have any more questions about this be sure to ask.” Just then, a pretty woman in a skirt walks confidently through the door. The father watches his son as he keeps his head directed towards the baseball in his hands, but tracks the woman going by with his eyes, then goes back to playing with the ball. The father stands up, collects his things, and says, “Nicely done. Now let’s go.”