More Mr. Nice Guy
Aug. 13th, 2008 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"My creed is this:
Happiness is the only good.
The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to make others so."
- Robert G. Ingersoll
According to my trusty Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Fifth Edition), the word "nice" is derived from Middle English and originally meant "foolish" or "wanton."
I can remember vividly the instant I decided to be a nice guy. I was in seventh grade and lurking in a junior high school hallway when my fleeting-crush-of-the-moment cooed to her studly young companion -- one of the stars of the basketball team -- "you're so nice."
Of course, I realize now that she was probably referring specifically to his abs, but at the time it seemed like a real eureka! moment. Until then I had been little more than a protoplasmic collection of selfish impulses and confused hormones. To wit: a mere two years prior to this event, I was composing nasty lyrics about my fleeting-crush-of-the-moment, set to various cartoon theme songs. Being "nice" was the least I could do.
(This is not to suggest that I was any kind of "bad boy" prior to this epiphany. I was in fact a nerd, a boy scout and a mama's boy -- the classic Dork Trifecta. But I hadn't yet made the transition from little boy to young adult, the difference being an acknowledgement that I lived in a society rather than my own little world.)
So I resolved to be nice, not just to her but to everyone I could think of, just in case she was watching. I made an effort to be prompt, polite and considerate. I paid compliments. I ceased any and all conversations about boogers.
As it turns out, this is not what my fleeting-crush-of-the-moment was really looking for in a boyfriend-of-the-moment. Apparently, she and the rest of her teenage sisterhood were attracted to a certain something else -- a casual coolness, a sense of style, a cult of personality -- I'm still not entirely sure how to describe it. But whatever it was, being "nice" was the antidote to it. "Niceness" was a metaphorical fire extinguisher on the flames of passion.
But by that time, the niceness had become instinctive, second-nature if not first-nature. I had made myself into a nice guy. Unfortunately, girls continued to favor other things over niceness, such as nice eyes, trucker hats and the intoxicating combination of stale beer and Drakkar Noir.
I'm in a place now (by which I mean maturationally, not environmentally) where niceness seems to work for me and has become its own reward. Still, there are a lot of successful assholes out there. And I wonder if maybe I should have been working on my jerkhood all this time.
Happiness is the only good.
The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to make others so."
- Robert G. Ingersoll
According to my trusty Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Fifth Edition), the word "nice" is derived from Middle English and originally meant "foolish" or "wanton."
I can remember vividly the instant I decided to be a nice guy. I was in seventh grade and lurking in a junior high school hallway when my fleeting-crush-of-the-moment cooed to her studly young companion -- one of the stars of the basketball team -- "you're so nice."
Of course, I realize now that she was probably referring specifically to his abs, but at the time it seemed like a real eureka! moment. Until then I had been little more than a protoplasmic collection of selfish impulses and confused hormones. To wit: a mere two years prior to this event, I was composing nasty lyrics about my fleeting-crush-of-the-moment, set to various cartoon theme songs. Being "nice" was the least I could do.
(This is not to suggest that I was any kind of "bad boy" prior to this epiphany. I was in fact a nerd, a boy scout and a mama's boy -- the classic Dork Trifecta. But I hadn't yet made the transition from little boy to young adult, the difference being an acknowledgement that I lived in a society rather than my own little world.)
So I resolved to be nice, not just to her but to everyone I could think of, just in case she was watching. I made an effort to be prompt, polite and considerate. I paid compliments. I ceased any and all conversations about boogers.
As it turns out, this is not what my fleeting-crush-of-the-moment was really looking for in a boyfriend-of-the-moment. Apparently, she and the rest of her teenage sisterhood were attracted to a certain something else -- a casual coolness, a sense of style, a cult of personality -- I'm still not entirely sure how to describe it. But whatever it was, being "nice" was the antidote to it. "Niceness" was a metaphorical fire extinguisher on the flames of passion.
But by that time, the niceness had become instinctive, second-nature if not first-nature. I had made myself into a nice guy. Unfortunately, girls continued to favor other things over niceness, such as nice eyes, trucker hats and the intoxicating combination of stale beer and Drakkar Noir.
I'm in a place now (by which I mean maturationally, not environmentally) where niceness seems to work for me and has become its own reward. Still, there are a lot of successful assholes out there. And I wonder if maybe I should have been working on my jerkhood all this time.
