On Being Nice

I don't believe in being nice.

Being kind?  Yes.  

Being fair?  Absolutely.  

Friendly?  Of course.

Polite?  Yes, please.

Merciful?  Yes.  Honest?  Great.  Moral?  You bet.  Pleasant?  Yeah.  Good?  Sure.  Likeable?  By all means.  Happy?  If only we all could.

But nice is different.  "She's so nice," you hear.  What does that mean?  Usually it means one of the above, but sometimes, being nice isn't really being nice.

Nice is passive.  Nice can be dishonest.  Nice is sometimes a nice façade behind which we hide ourselves.  Nice lies.  Nice tricks.  Nice doesn’t stand up for what is right, what is needed.

Nice turns a blind eye.

Nice hurts you, and it hurts others.

Nice allows a boy to paw your daughter unimpeded.  Nice leads sheep into a dangerous gulley.  Nice keeps prejudice uncalled on.  Nice keeps corruption in power.  Nice doesn’t teach assertiveness--standing up for your rights without trampling on others’.  Nice keeps wisdom quiet.  Nice is a cork that makes perfectly decent people periodically blow up into raging lunatics.  Nice causes depression, promotes injustice.  It hides truth behind its shining, opaque windows. 

Nice causes shame to outraged hearts.  Nice creates guilt in those attempting to do things right.  Nice stands up people’s valid expectations.  Nice keeps busy people too busy.  Nice creates irresponsible and ill-prepared children.  Nice doesn’t notice the wolf’s feet beneath the sheepskin.  Nice goes along with, shuts up, votes blindly.

Nice is not always nice.

How May I Impact You?

It took me something like forty years to learn this, but I finally learned that you make an impact, whether you mean to or not.

If you're there, your presence makes an impact.

If you're not there, but you're supposed to be there, your absence makes an impact.

If you think you can be there but not be noticed, or noticeable, or make an impact, you're not seeing the whole picture.

I used to get told a lot to "Smile!"  Nothing irritates someone not smiling more than being told to smile.  I don't think a smile is what I responded to those people with.

From my perspective, I was just going about my business.  I wasn't in a bad mood.  I wasn't being unpleasant.  I was just being me--probably lost in my own thoughts, and if I wasn't smiling about something, I just wasn't smiling about anything.  No one needed to take it personally.  I was minding my own business and wishing at that moment that others would, too.

Why should I go around grinning like a goon all the time?

If I didn't know someone, or know them well, I didn't need to say hello as we passed.  I was as inconsequential to them as they were to me.

So I thought.

I'm not naturally very extroverted, so this is one of my blind spots.  I would never be overtly rude, so I thought I was not being rude.  I would never hurt people on purpose, so I assumed I was not hurtful.

But.  When you pass someone and don't acknowledge them, you make an impact whether you mean to or not.  If you are in the same room with someone and you're each busy doing your own thing, you impact each other slightly no matter what.  This is what I learned.

The other person has to wonder, on some level, what does it mean that she doesn't say hi?  Does she not like me?  Is she a grouch?  Have I offended her in some way?  Is she a conceited snob?  Am I wearing the wrong thing?  Beneath her notice?  Do I have something stuck in my teeth?

I was shocked to learn that people thought negatively of me--people I had never meant to offend and never would have offended.  I was just shy, and lost in my own thoughts.  Everyone has blind spots where they do not see themselves in the same way others do.  This was one of mine.

It's so simple just to do something to make sure that your impact, however slight, leans in the positive direction instead of the negative direction.  So, why not do it?  Why not smile, say hi, acknowledge people in some way?  It breaks the tension and makes everyone feel better.  You might even make a friend, or hear something interesting or amusing in return. 

The fact is that people do form impressions of us, whether we want them to or not.  And not just based on our appearance, but on our behavior.  Might as well be a good one. 

I'd rather people, no matter how little contact I may have had with them, think of me as nice.  It doesn't hurt anything.  The opposite might.

This idea can be extended out into areas where you have repeated contact--at work, school, or church.  Even in our families.  Much like the white space in art, what you don't do and don't say can make an impact, as well as what you do do and say.  If you're in a group that is talking or behaving in a way that you don't agree with, not saying or doing something can leave the impression that you do agree.  Especially when it's important, we need to make ourselves known.

Just today, my husband asked me to meet him at a location downtown in order to get gas at a good price in both of our vehicles.  I was thinking about something on the way down, and I got involved with a Sudoku puzzle as I waited for him. Since he had left the house while I was at the gym, this was the first time we had seen each other today. 

"How are you?" he asked.  Then, "Everything okay?" 

He asked me enough times that I realized, oh--I am being really quiet and he can't tell why.  My monosyllabic answers were leaving him curious.  What was going on with me, anyway?  I just felt in a subdued mood--nothing really was going on.  I was fine--just a little tired from three bad nights' sleep in a row, and from my five-mile run.  But he clearly wondered if something was wrong or I was mad or sick or something else. 

It occurred to me that it would be nice if I could explain, so I tried.  "I'm just a little lost in thought," I said.  "I'm working on a blog post about being lost in thought, so I'm. . .practicing."

He laughed a deep laugh from his center, and I smiled.  I'm always glad when I can live up to the first quality he told me he sought in a woman--to remain interesting.

Because, at the end of the day, no matter how many interested thoughts we introverts self-generate, we want to relate well to the people outside of and around us.

And, as I've found, one sure-fire way to get people to stop telling you, "Smile!" is to already be smiling.

The Case of the Band-aid Bandit

Every two weeks or so, I go through a little ritual.  I go to the store, buy the biggest and cheapest box of Band-aids I can find, and come home and hide it from the Band-aid Bandit.

Sometimes, I think I should just walk in, show her the box, and dump all the Band-aids into the wastebasket.

She needs Band-aids so often, you'd think there was abuse.  Sunday, she whispered to me in church, "Mom, I have a thing on my hand that hurts so much and is driving me crazy."

I admit I was only half-listening, but I tried to shake myself out of it.  After all, how do I know she isn't seriously injured?

"Ooh!  What did you do?" I ask, turning my head to look at her hand, which she is holding up limply, supported fully by her other hand.

"It's that," she whispers, pointing to a place on her skin that looks just fine.  "It keeps catching on stuff and hurting a lot."

I move in for a better look.  "Where is it?"

"There!  It's THAT!"  She is pointing to a healed-over scratch one millimeter long on the top of her hand.

Incredulous, I look at her.  And wait for the punch line.  Here it comes!  HERE IT COMES!

"Can I have a Band-aid?"

To be fair, she doesn't go through the Band-aids all by herself.  Her brother hurts himself up to five times a day. We hear his wail and head for the Band-aid box.  He's always got various body parts he is sticking up from the bathtub lest they get wet and a Band-aid comes off.  It's quite entertaining to watch him try to juggle his washcloth and soap amidst all the sticking up toes, fingers, and other bandaged body parts of the day.

When this boy was learning to say his body parts, he named his forehead his "Bonk."

It's quite a chore trying to keep the Band-aid hiding place a secret as we run to it constantly.  Consequently, we go through them even faster, because it is no secret.  Today, I even told my daughter, after she made her case, to go get a Band-aid, and she didn't even pretend to not know where they were.

Now it seems the ante has been upped to a new level.  Last week, my husband picked up a small supply of postage stamps.

Suddenly, this daughter needed to write letters to all her friends who moved at the end of the school year.  (Because they all moved, you know.)  And great-aunt Eleanor.  And her grandpas for Father's Day.  Dragging her brother along, she took more than one trip to the mailbox.

"Okay, Hon," I said, "But that's it.  Stamps don't grow on trees, like Band-aids."

The next day, I saw another letter hanging out of the mailbox, ready to go.  I looked at it.  It was addressed in red pen to some people I had never heard of.

My daughter's name was on the return address.

"Hon," I said, hauling in my bags from work.  "Who'd you write to today?"

Who else?  Her friend's brother and sister!  "They're friends, too," she said.

Dad Was There

I was sitting in my father's funeral before I fully realized what a great man he was.

My dad loomed large in my life.  You knew when he called you, you'd better run to him.  Hesitation was not a good idea.  You just came.

I feared and respected my dad, but I was not particularly close to him.

I knew that he worked hard all of his life to provide for his large family.  He used his ingenuity and confidence.  He always took a can-do attitude with him and was seldom discouraged.

When it came to decisions about us children, and even often his own business, he deferred to the wisdom and insight of my mother.  He always gave my mother credit for everything good.  As I viewed my mother as as perfect as any human being could be, I accepted his deferment without question.  Mom always handed Dad credit back, but I always thought this was just modesty and politeness on her part.

I didn't think my dad was perfect.  I didn't think of him as bad.  I really just didn't think of him enough at all.

Dad was just there.  He was always there, in the background, supporting Mom and us with whatever we were doing.  He didn't often call attention to himself.  He was just one of the people there.

But that is my point.

He was there.

He was always there.  He might not have been effusive in his praise of us, although he did say kind words at appropriate times.  But he was there.  When someone had an event in his or her life, Dad was there.  He might not have made speeches or been extravagant.  But he was there.

He was faithful to my mother.  He served faithfully in his church.  He was there for us at school performances, recitals, graduations, talks.  He wanted the best for us, was proud of our achievements, and was there to see them.

He took care of my mother until her death, even though his came first.  The night he died, I was haunted by disturbing images of my mother slaving herself twenty hours a day, trying to keep their business running. I was relieved in the morning when she told me she would be receiving his life insurance benefit and could close down the business.

For all his gruffness, Dad had a tender heart.  He could often be found silently weeping during touching sermons and TV shows.

He and Mom went to countless viewings and funerals for people they knew.  In times of crisis, he was there.  He rescued us from broken pipes, clogged drains, and locked-in keys.  He unhesitatingly put on a white shirt and trousers any time anyone asked him to give them a blessing.

He came, and he was there.

Thanks, Dad.

Choosing to Be Happy

I talked with a woman who said something interesting.  She said, "If you met my mother, you would know within five minutes that her mother died when she was five." 

I found this interesting because my mother's mother had died when she was five.

She used to talk about it to me, mostly because I asked questions.  I asked myself, "Would she divulge this information to someone within five minutes?"  I couldn't imagine it.

My mother was not someone who went around complaining.  In the midst of a trial, she would count her blessings.  "It's a good thing the car broke down at that point in our trip instead of later, because. . ." she could see some blessing that she might have missed otherwise.  Even when my dad, her best friend for over fifty years, suddenly died, she was saying, "I'm so blessed!  I'm so blessed!"  She was reflecting on how he would have hated to be ill or suffer.

My mother had an uplifting attitude.  She looked for and saw the good in everyone, so people all loved her.

Yet, my mother was no stranger to adversity.

I can scarcely imagine how she bore the pain of her young life.

When she was three, her mother became ill.  She was more or less ill from then on.  My mother was the youngest of eight children.  There were plenty of people around to take care of her, but there is nobody else quite like a mother.

As far as I can tell, her mother died a slow death in a bed in the dining room of the home.  My mother and the other small children had not been allowed to see her for some time, except to peer at her from the doorway.  Although her mother was probably only a few feet away from her when she died, she did not get to say goodbye.

I've been through the death of my mother.  But I did not have to go through it at age five.

Even as a little girl, I tried to comprehend this tragedy.  "How did you ever stop crying?" I remember asking her.

She smiled softly.  "I just eventually did," she said.  "People were kind to me."

The year she was nine, however, was even worse.  First, her grandmother died, then a beloved sister.  My mother herself was burned in a fire that fall and had third degree burns on her arms and upper torso.  She wasn't expected to live, so the doctor let one arm grow to her side.  He had sprayed her with an acid that formed a thick crust on her wounds.  When her father became convinced that this doctor was doing her no good and insisted on moving her to another hospital, the doctor, in anger, ripped the crust off her healing skin and wrapped her in gauze.  My mother remembers the nurses at the new hospital weeping as they tried to remove the gauze from her raw flesh.

She spent four months in the hospital and required skin graft surgeries, which also left her legs scarred.  She was bashful about her scarred limbs for years.  One month after she finally left the hospital--and six days before her next birthday--her father also died.  Her grandfather died a few weeks later.

She grew up an orphan then, raised by her remaining older sisters.  She was so ill with pneumonia, that she had to be sent away from her family for two winters so that she would survive.

She came back from California two years ahead of her class, mortified to think that anyone might find out her age.  She graduated from high school at barely sixteen and would have liked to be a doctor, but there was no money for that.  For a girl, it would have been almost unheard of, anyway, in those days.

So often, I hear or read complaints from people about how others are trying to make them miserable or are ruining their lives.  Or that life itself is unfair.  I have been guilty of this at times, myself.

My mother chose to be happy.  She was never rich. She only attended one semester of college.  No one outside of her neighborhood or family ever heard of her. 

She married young and worked hard.  She was kind and faithful.  She was tactful and truthful.  She loved much and was much loved.  She had everyone's respect.  She set humble life goals, centered around her children and what she hoped for them.  She met them all.

No matter what happened to her, she chose to be happy.

That Hole in Your Soul

When I think about it, I am still a little bit upset about an opportunity I missed in fourth grade.

My teacher, Miss Thomas, was a young woman with blue eyes, a high, shiny forehead, and black hair styled into a flip.  One day, she announced a contest.  Whoever wrote a list of the most homophones could have a prize.  The prize she held up had my eyes doing flips.  It was the first king-sized candy bar I had ever seen in my life.  I could hardly believe they would make candy bars that big.

I looked at that bar, and I knew it was mine.  I could totally do this.  Why, I could think of ten homophones off the top of my head just like that.  I grabbed a blue-lined piece of newsprint and started writing.  There were be and bee, I and eye, through and threw, are and our (to my young mind).  I even knew some triple homophones!  Two, too, and to and there, their, and they're.  It wasn't very often that I felt I could win an offered prize, but I knew I could do this.  That candy bar had my name written all over it, right over Hershey's.

And then I forgot all about it.

Some days later, Miss Thomas announced the winner of the contest and handed Sherry Royal my candy bar.

I had never finished my list.

I knew it was fair, but I was still dismayed.

I still haven't ever made a list of all the homophones I can think of.  But I plan to.  Maybe when I've retired and the kids are grown.  I ought to know a whole lot of them by then.  Whenever I think about homophones, or hear some new ones, I think about this contest, and how I let myself down.

I was talking to a coworker about this today, and he said he had once won a candy bar like that in an art contest.  He said he put it in his locker, and when he went back to his locker, it was not there.

I gasped!  "Who did you tell your locker combination to?" I asked.

He shook his head sadly.  "I don't remember."

Then I proposed that after I make my homophone list (and he added that he could paint another picture), we go out to a store together and BUY ourselves king-sized candy bars.

Because I'm pretty sure that I still have never had one.  And I'm pretty sure that finally completing that assignment and getting that reward I wanted would heal some decades-old part of me.

"You can't ever fix that hole in your soul, though," he said.

Say What?!

 I remember the day I found out that the rules by which you live can change on you.

It was a Saturday morning when I was about four years old.  As usual, I got up and joined my brother and sister in the living room for cartoons.

From there, it got weird.

With no forewarning, my brother and sister both turned to me and told me that I should be wearing green, or they would pinch me.

I had never heard of such a thing before in my life!

You could be allowed to pinch people?!  For not wearing a certain color?!  It seemed outrageous.  At least, it seemed they should have known that I had not had a chance to get dressed yet, and that I was only four.

However, they insisted.  They did their best to convince my incredulous mind that they knew what they were talking about.

They even went so far as to locate a blue-greenish Kleenex and tuck it into the neck of my jammies for me.
I couldn't wait until Mama got up and set the world straight again.  I waited out cartoons one by one, feeling ridiculous in my Kleenex but grateful I wasn't getting pinched.  I looked forward to the vindication I expected.

However, when Mama did get up, it didn't go quite as well as I expected.

She didn't say that I had to wear green or she would pinch me, but she did sort of duck her chin and say, "Well. . . ."  Which had to mean that my brother and sister were not completely wrong.

I was dismayed.

She may have mildly scolded them for springing this on me, but I think I was helped to find an outfit that included some green. Which meant that I ended up having to conform to this ridiculous new rule.  With Mama's sanction.

What else did I not know about the world that I was supposed to already know?

It's not always easy to be a child.  I see moments of confusion like this in my own children--when they discover (often in a way that embarrasses them) that there was a rule they hadn't known about or that there are things we shouldn't say, or when adults laugh at something they say and they can't see why.

It's part of growing up.

A painful part, I think.

It's amazing, really, how complex are the rules and standards by which we live.  And the layers and conditions and exceptions and intersections that we have to learn, one by one.  We expect everyone to know and live the rules that we cherish and live by.  I see my children struggle to overcome the learning curve.

My youngest child is constantly making up rules--for all of us.  It's his way of coping with this.  He'll announce, "I only have white bread on Tuesdays," or "When I'm six, I'll pick up my books," or some other seemingly random thing that neither he nor we can track.

I can tell that not understanding has made him feel anxious sometimes.  Sometimes his rule-making has exceeded our patience.  He used to count words as he read them, count steps, count everything.  I told him, "We don't have to count everything."  It seemed to relieve him of a great burden.

My heart aches for children who aren't assisted through this process.  Who are told, "Because I said so," or  some other dismissive thing that does not explain anything.

Even if we think our children are too young to understand the rules, we should explain them.  How else will they figure things out with confidence?

Dog Do(o) Not!

This might come as a surprise to some people, but I didn't buy my lawn so that dogs could use it.

Call me crazy, but my thought when I purchased my front lawn was actually along the lines that a lawn was a nice attachment for my house, something attractive leading up to the house, somewhere for my kids to run--I don't know, something (anything) else.

I admit that I am not a dog person, but I do respect dog people who take care of their dogs.  And their dogs' doings.

People who like dogs are certainly free to obtain dogs.  It might be a good idea, though, to buy a lawn before you buy a dog.

Or at least have a lawn in mind--one that does not belong to someone else.

The other evening, I was pulling into my driveway, and a young couple was allowing their two dogs to do their doings on my lawn.

I fumbled for my window.  "That is not a dog park!" I said.

They looked up at me in shock.  Shock!

"She's going to clean it up," the guy said.

I agree that cleaning it up is better than not cleaning it up, but it made me want to ask them: Would they mind if I smeared something nasty on their car, and then picked it off?

It's a matter of respect.  The lawn is not theirs.  My children play on it.  I walk on it.  My husband mows it.  None of us uses it for a bathroom, and we really don't want anyone else to.

 We live downhill from a large apartment complex apparently housing a legion of dogs.  I have thought before of posting a sign on my lawn, but I can't decide which one.  "Not a dog park" is my current favorite.  For what it's worth, there is an actual dog park across the street.  I pointed this out to the couple on my lawn.

I've also thought of: "Please purchase your own lawn for your dog," "Leave your address so I can return your property," "No trespooping," and "Dog owners: please ring the doorbell for a free dirty diaper."

However, so far, I have yet to post a sign.  After all, I wouldn't want to be rude!