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“All skin teeth is not grin.” I al­ways heard my grand­moth­er say this. Grew up hear­ing and us­ing this say­ing. Have even coun­selled my chil­dren us­ing it. It guides our con­ver­sa­tion this week.

We have a way of con­dens­ing wis­dom in­to short, sharp say­ings that car­ry cen­turies of ob­ser­va­tion about hu­man na­ture. One such proverb is “All skin teeth is not grin.” On the sur­face, it is sim­ple: not every­one who smiles with you tru­ly has your best in­ter­est at heart. Be­hind the smile could be en­vy, mal­ice, or care­ful­ly dis­guised be­tray­al. It is a warn­ing we would do well to re­mem­ber, not on­ly in our per­son­al lives, but al­so in pol­i­tics, cor­po­rate board­rooms, pub­lic ser­vice, fam­i­lies, mar­riages, and busi­ness part­ner­ships.

The say­ing is root­ed in a cul­tur­al recog­ni­tion that ap­pear­ances can de­ceive. The act of “skin­ning teeth,” flash­ing a smile, may be noth­ing more than a mask. The re­al test lies not in what is shown out­ward­ly but in the mo­tives and char­ac­ter of the in­di­vid­ual. Let us ex­plore how this time­less cau­tion ap­plies across the spheres of life.