In Defense of Nice

This was originally a guest post I did over @ my girl Melissa's blog http://www.myalienbody.com/

Hello, Melissa! Wasn't that BlogHer conference a blast?

All is well with me, my loves, I've been ... writing a book. Just typing that makes my head want to explode. More on the book (draft) later. 

In an effort to prove I am still here in the blogosphere, I'm borrowing this post to give me a jumpstart back into the blogging groove. Hope you enjoy.

What’s so bad about nice?

With so many corners of the world in turmoil, strife-- crushed under war, illness and sadness, is there a place for “nice”? Or should the word be abandoned as an archaic notion?

Attending college and getting exposed to a bunch of literary theorists beat the wordnice out of me. 

I was taught that the word was never to be used when describing literature, for instance. Calling Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, or Henry David Thoreau nice in a college English class might get a student verbally stoned. 

Nice was a dirty word, showing the ignorance of the person who used it. Nice was uncool. I was already supremely uncool as a non-traditional student, typically the oldest person in any college class (often including the instructor).  I didn’t need to feel even more out of place because of a four-letter word.

So I turned away from nice as I would from a bad smell, holding my nose, coughing a little when someone else made the mistake of using nice during class. A professor told me that using nice was as bad, as damning, as a woman wearing the color pink. Nice showed a lack of commitment, of seriousness, of intellect.

I swallowed, hard, as I was wearing a pink cardigan that day, and wanted to crawl under the desk. I gave the cardigan to the Goodwill. No more pink, no more nice. I could sneer at nice with the best of them. 

But the sneer didn’t fit me well. Uneasy, I avoided the word nice, but for my own reasons, or so I told myself. Nice was vague, wishy-washy, a term used by default when an un-schooled individual was at a loss for words. Nice didn’t have cachet, joie de vivre, or prestige. Nice did not garner respect. I was too snobby, too smart to use nice.

My nice-avoidance lasted a good ten years. 

Over the past year or so, I’ve been having second thoughts about nice. Blogging has exposed me to a group of supportive people who’ve become my friends. Most, if not all, of the comments they make are kind. I like it that way. 

I didn’t begin blogging to find flagellation. I can flagellate myself just fine, thanks very much. Feel free to make nice comments, call me nice, and be nice to each other at my blog. Really.

Other bloggers may revel in abundant criticism, verbal sparring, and don’t mind mud-wrestling with readers. Kudos to them. I don’t have that kind of blog, not that there’s anything wrong with thoughtful disagreement.  

But if you want a spirited debate on every point I’ve made, you probably won’t read me more than once. That’s not my niche, if I have a niche. Or maybe I have a nice niche? Sorry, couldn’t resist that bit of alliteration.

While nice can and often is overused and abused, I hear it creeping back into my casual conversation and sometimes, my writing. In a worldwide cesspool of derision, intolerance, back-stabbing, and prejudice, perhaps it’s okay to be, and to use, nice.