I thought it was a joke at first, but joking is not allowed.

Sitting in a chair, waiting for the camera flash and zap my face onto a credential for this week's Four Continents Figure Skating championships, the guy on the other side of the desk laid down the law, politely: "There's no smiling allowed," he said.

"I can't smile?" (Not that this has been one of life's great challenges for me. Smirk, yes, smile? No.)

"Sorry, but I'm serious," he said.

He was, indeed, serious. The friendly people making credentials here are, just like athletes and other officials, on an official test run for the Olympic Games. Normally at these things, you get a little plastic or paper card laminated and strung on a strap, to gain admission to media seating, a media work room, and the dreaded Mix Zone in the bowels of the stadium.

But this time around, we were getting a full-on Olympic-style credential, a much more complex, larger credential (we call them "license plates." When you wear one out in the wind, it can flip around and practically strangle you to death. It is, in fact, how I expect to someday go to the big press box in the sky.)

Smiling for those photos is verboten, speculation has it, because it apparently might screw up facial recognition software that MIGHT be used by Olympic security. Apparently there are no grinning terrorists, or something. Any other good theories? I was told the same thing last time I got a passport photo shot. Also thought that was a joke. Guess not.

I would've asked more questions, but didn't want to be subdued by a SWAT team. (Although, I have to say, the credentials crew was almost alarmingly pleasant.)

So, there it is: The IOC's control over the Olympics now extends to controlling my face. One step away from controlling my fingers and my keyboard. Can mind-control be far off?

At any rate, my official Four Continents license plate has a determined, half-smirk, non-smile on the front. Thank God nobody cracked a joke, or I would have wound up in the basement of the Hotel Mountie.

There's no smiling allowed there, either.

Photo: Another successful non-smile/Ron Judd