Ciera L's Response to "When Nice Ain't So Nice"

As I read “When Nice Aint So Nice” it reminded me of a story, more so a joke my best friend’s mother told me.

            There were three women sitting together, just chatting over a cup of tea (don’t worry, I’m sure it was Word of Wisdom/Honor code approved tea). Looking upon them they seemed to just be having a friendly and casual conversation.

            “My parents bought me dresses and shoes and gave me money.” one woman in green stated loudly.
            “How nice.” said another woman wearing a blue dress.

            “Well my daddy owned the biggest restaurants around and gave me whatever I wanted.” said the third woman in yellow.
            “How nice.” said the woman in blue.

            “Well my parents had me home schooled by all the best teachers and advisers, and I learned etiquette and all sorts of cultures.” stated the woman in green haughtily.
            “How nice.” said the woman in blue.

            “Well my parents sent me to award winning boarding schools and eventually schools like Harvard and Yale and Princeton. I learned everything only the best scholars learned.” said the woman in yellow, not to be outdone.

            “How nice.” said the woman in blue again.

            Both women finally turned and looked at her.
            “And what about you?” said the woman in green harshly.

            “My parents brought me up and sent me to schools that taught me to say “How nice” to stupid women (this wasn’t said quite so nice in the story I was told though) like you.”

When Elouise Bell started speaking of the “Nice Lady” this story immediately came to mind. She talks of how women are much more deadly because of the silence and passiveness. How all of us, not just women, hide our anger behind our niceness. It made me think about what we really mean when we speak to each other. Which leads me to another part of her essay where she mentioned how we all wear masks, how we all say “I’m fine.” when really, we are not.

People in the world have so many problems today, but personally I think the biggest one is communication. I mean, how many times have we watched movies where the protagonist is in love with a certain character and that character loves the protagonist as well. But somehow they never quite figure it out and signals get mixed and misread and everything gets screwed up.  It is all in the communication. If the silly protagonist had just said “I stinking love you!” then the other character would have understood, instead of having to read the answer of “Well sure, if you want to.” to their question of “Want to hang-out some time?” But no, everything is confused and jumbled and makes no sense. We don’t say what we mean, we always have to say something else, something “nice.” People don’t actually tell you how they are feeling when you ask, it’s always I’m fine, or I’m ok. They don’t tell you how they feel because they know you are just being “nice” as well, and in reality you don’t actually care.  But this isn’t always true, and it’s probably not even mostly true. In fact we probably do care more often than not, but it doesn’t change the fact that on occasion, we do say things just to be “nice.”

But the craziest part is how Bell turns being nice into a bad thing. Her explanation seemed flawless as I read and still seems to hold steady in my mind and still makes me think about it. It goes as far back as playing on the playground. We learned to be polite, to take turns on the swings, to wait in line to play tetherball, etc. We learned to be “nice” and submissive to adults. We learned all we needed to about suppressing our anger behind nice. Maybe it really is because we suppress our anger during face-to-face interaction that we are so crazy and angry on the roads.

Because of Bell’s philosophy, I now have my own. I imagine that if we wanted to know the true intents and characteristics of a person, we need only look at how they treat others on the road or when they aren’t interacting in a very personal way. Because like Bell said, that is where we are not so “nice”, we are rude and ugly to the faceless people we interact with, although there are some who are not. In these instances, we may have truly “nice” people, and not in the bad way that Bell turns it into.

Nice has been turned into such a loaded word for me. It is impossible to think of it as a simple “nice” “four-letter word” anymore. It has become much more. We should all take the time to figure out what kind of nice we truly are.