The Greatest Hits of my niceness

Well it's Saturday. That means I have gone a whole week with being nice. I have to admit, I did slip a couple of times. Last night Don and I went to Chinese Gardens. There was a young family there that had a screaming baby. I usually try to be patient in these situations, because I have had to deal with screaming babies myself. In fact, in my line of work (that would be defined as owning a baby of your own) it is pretty impossible to avoid screaming babies. That, of course, is what babysitters are for. And in the absence of a babysitter, there is always Daddy. Daddy is really good for taking screaming baby out to the lobby or even the parking lot for some calming down time.This family had obviously not availed themselves of the babysitter option. But they did have a Daddy.

Daddy just seemed to be a little unaware of his responsibilities.

For some reason last night I was just very aware of that loud baby. I rather loudly said, Man I sure wish they would do something with that baby. Don, of course was not amused. He told me I needed to keep my voice down. Don is funny that way. He suffers from a bad case of CTMWPTOY. Okay I will be nice and translate that for you. It means "Caring too much what people think of you." I on the other hand (at least in Don's opinion) could stand to be infected with a mild strain of CTMWPTOY. Fortunately for me it will never happen.

I seem to have a natural immunity to this particular disease.

My point here is that on my last night of my week of niceness, I tripped right as I was reaching the finish line. Not to worry though. That baby was making so much noise I don't think the parents would have heard me even if I had been using a Bullhorn.

Question: If you say or do an unkind thing to someone and they are not aware of it, does it still count as an unkind thing?

Personally I say NO it does NOT. So I guess I am cleared of all charges.

Like I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, this seemed to be a pretty slow week for niceness. I usually do practice the common courtesies. I try to be as pleasant as possible in most instances when I am required to engage with unknown people. And if those people are nice back then there is seldom any problem at all. I think in my last few posts I have pretty well documented the temptations I have had this week to not be nice, and how smoothly I have sailed through. So I have come to the conclusion that my week of turning over a new leaf and being nice to everyone, especially those people that are so stupid or grouchy or ignorant, has been a smashing Success!!!

I have had time for some serious reflection. I have thought about it and realized that most of my good deeds this week were more or less me stopping myself from being unpleasant. I didn't have much of a chance to actually do something that was nice, I just refrained from being mean.

I think that just maybe I should have held myself to a higher standard.

This has started me thinking and trying to remember times when I have committed a kind act and not just held back on a mean one.

I have come up with a few. Although they didn't occur this week I think I will offer them up as examples that I really can be an extremely decent person.

First example: This happened a few years ago before my dad died and when he still had a pretty sound mind.

I was driving to my parent's house in the neighboring city of Pasco. They lived on Court street at the time in a nice little duplex. I saw this older guy, who was in front of me, but in the next lane. It was pretty obvious that he was trying to find an address. I sped up to him and motioned for him to pull over. I had really felt prompted to do this. I'm not usually the kind to tell other drivers to pull over and speak to me.

He pulled over.

I was kind of surprised. Surprised in the "did I do that?" kind of way. He got out of his car and came over to me. I asked him if he was trying to find his way. It turned out he was. He told me where he was trying to go. I wasn't much help because I don't know Pasco that well. But, I knew that my dad, who just lived maybe a mile away from where we were, knew where everything in Pasco was. I told him to follow me to my parents house and that my dad could help him.

I led. He followed. I found my dad. Dad was thrilled to help the guy out. Dad explained to lost guy which way he needed to go. It turned out that lost guy had been going in the opposite direction and had really gotten himself lost. Dad drew a map.

Just in case.

Lost guy was so thrilled that I had stopped him and taken him to get directions from my dad. He actually tried to pay us. Of course we told him no. And you know what? It felt good. Niceness really can be it's own reward.

Example #2

This happened a few months ago. I had a late Water and Sewer bill I had to get paid. For some reason I am always forgetting this bill. I think it might be because it comes every two months instead of monthly. I just can't seem to get into the habit of paying it. My garbage bill is even easier to forget because it is every three months.

Oh well this is neither here nor there.

The point is, I was in city hall waiting in line to pay my late water bill. I was kinda annoyed that I had forgotten once again to pay that stupid water bill on time. There was this lady in front of me though that made my stress look microscopic. Apparently she was REALLY behind on her water bill. And her lateness wasn't because she forgot, it was because she plain didn't have the money. It sounded like her water was going to be cut off the following Monday.

This was late Thursday afternoon.

She had brought in, like, around 65 dollars cash. She told the clerk that it was all she had. She also said that she wouldn't have any more money until the following Friday. The Clerk was trying to be as nice as she could be, but her hands were tied. The poor lady still needed another 26 bucks to pay off the entire amount. She was practically in tears as she told the clerk that she would try to borrow the money from somebody and bring it in by Monday. It didn't sound like she was very sure about it though.


Now here I was standing right behind her and hearing everything.

My first thought was "yeah, no money to pay your bills, but I bet you have money for cigarettes and beer." All of a sudden though, I felt sick that I could be so cold. She didn't look like the kind of person that would do something like that. And then even more surprising, I realized that even if she had spent her money that way, that I had no business judging her. I also thought to myself that there had certainly been times in the early years of our marriage that Don and I had been just that strapped. Then I thought to myself, how very scary it must be, to need such a small amount as 26 dollars and not have any way of getting it.

That's when I had the idea to pay it for her.

The more I thought about it I knew that I would do it. The problem was I didn't really know how to go about it. At first I thought about stepping in and asking her to let me pay it for her. That just didn't seem like too good of an idea though. If I had been in her position and someone had offered to help me that way. Well yes, I would have been thankful and relieved but I would have also been pretty embarrassed too. I would be feeling pretty awkward too. I would feel the need to get the person's name and address and promise to pay them back. The last thing I wanted to do was add to her stress or even worse embarrass her in front of all the people still in line behind me.

So I waited for her to be done.

As soon as she was out the door I went up to the clerk and quietly asked if it was possible for me to pay off the rest of her bill. I tried to keep it as quiet as possible because even though she wasn't there anymore I still felt the need to protect her from embarrassment. The clerk was thrilled to let me pay it for her. She told me that this was the part of her job she hated, she always felt so bad when dealing with these situations. The clerk wanted to know if I would like to leave my name and address or phone number to give to the lady in case she wanted to contact me. I told her that no I did not want to do that. I just told her to let her know it came from someone who has been in that kind of situation before. The clerk couldn't wait to contact the lady and let her know that her bill was paid up.

So, with one simple, didn't hurt me at all, act, I helped to make the lady's day that hadn't had the money. And the clerk was so happy to be able to inform the lady that her bill had been taken care of that she let me know that I had just made her day. and I suddenly felt so nice that my day was made as well.

It just felt SO GOOD, to do something nice for someone.

So you see there really are times when I can go above and beyond. I just wish I could remember to be this way more often.

I'm sure that all of you have similar stories that you could share. When I'm not being cynical, I really do have to admit that people generally are good. It's just that the bad ones are so obnoxious and extreme that it makes it hard to focus on the good.

I hope this hasn't been too preachy. And I hope that we will all have a NICE week ahead of us.