YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE

I live in a town that is positively bursting with nice. There is more nice per square foot in this town than there is grass. Nice is everywhere.

 At times I will take the opportunity of posing a question to one of these extremely nice Lexingtonians. My question is that if they were to overhear a conversation by two other nice Lexingtonians about how nice it is to see one another, each one praising the other for how good they look, or two other characters that hadn’t seen each other in awhile. One saying to the other, “What’s the matter with you? You look like shit. Which conversation would you rather eavesdrop?

 One of the worst examples of their niceness is often experienced driving behind one of them. They let everybody out!! Even people, who are not yet out of their garage, receive the blinking light signal, while I gnash my teeth, stopped behind the “nice” driver. It seems nothing could be more important to them than the “thank you” hand wave given by the released driver. These nice people drivers have no concern about those driving behind them, I could scream and often do.

 Another nice that makes me crazy is the door holding, especially when I’m way back and have to run. I mean run fast, so that the very nice holder doesn’t have to wait long.

 Dana my wife is nice, in fact she is very nice. Worse she is always proving it to me. We do not argue much. We consider it pointless, since our discussions, as Dana is prone to call them, always end with Dana saying, “You are not nice!!!” We then both agree, I’m not nice.

 Dana believes nice should prevail no matter where, even at 35,000 feet. Not long ago, we were on a plane, when the fellow in front of me let go some terrible smelling gas. I began to choke and gasp for breath. Everyone knows, there is not a lot of oxygen on a plane,and you cannot open a window, the only air left was this dark, smelly, noxious cloud.  In order to survive and not get asphyxiated, I pulled out the airline magazine from its jacket and frantically fanned it back in the direction of the culprit. Dana witnessing my strategy said, “That’s not nice!” Once I was able to breathe and speak again, I said, “This person does not even know me and is trying to kill me. Are you saying I should have let him do it?” Dana then replied with the worst pun I ever heard. “You don’t have to stink to his level.

 I find myself reflecting back to my years in N.Y.C.. I cannot remember anyone ever saying the word nice, never mind worried about acting nice The beauty of New York

was no one cared about nice. It was every person for him or herself. You always knew where you stood.

 N.Y.C. is probably the only city in the universe where when someone already on an elevator spots you coming, their reflex is to press the close the door button. In a way, they are being courteous, since now there is no need to run.

 I remember the moves I would make to fake another driver out of a parking place. Often, I would put my blinker on in an opposite direction than the open parking space and then dart into the open space

 Parking tickets in N.Y.C. were our badges of dishonor. Often, I would see people taking parking tickets off someone else’s car & place it on their own car. This way they would avoid being ticketed.   .

 Restaurants were the ground floor of un-nice behavior. In fact, they were our role models. When I lived there, it was not unusual for a waiter to come to my table and yell, “What do you want? You’ve been here already before. You should know what you want. We don’t have specials here. I haven’t got all day! Maybe you should go home and have your mother cook you a special.”

 Finishing your meal was no better. The waiter would often say something like, “You aren’t done yet? Can’t you see that there are other people waiting for your table? I already told you, I haven’t got all day!”

 Once one of my friends came into N.Y.C. from Boston. Our plan was to meet at a specific restaurant. He arrived about twenty minutes before me and tried to get a waiter to serve him a drink of water. No one even looked his way. When I sat down, because I lived in N.Y.C., I had a waiter to our table in moments. After leaving the city, I went back to the same restaurant. Now I could not get anyone to wait on me. They knew! They could smell the out-of-towner on me.

 There was the time I tried to visit a friend working at a store on 34^th Street. When I arrived I was told my friend was out. I asked the manager if he would tell my friend that I had come by. The manager screamed at me “Do I look like a messenger boy?”

 Another time at a Bronx deli when I asked for .35c worth of lox,15c of cream cheese, and please mix the potato salad & cole slaw and one bagel. The counter man totaled it up at 92c and screamed, “ WHAT ARE YOU HAVING A PARTY?”

 There was the gourmet cheese store where I went to purchase a house warming gifts for friends. Being  overwhelmed by unpronounceable cheeses, I asked for a pound of cheddar. The sales clerk screamed at me, “ IF YOU WANT CHEDDAR  Sonny Boy GO ACROSS THE STREET TO THE SUPER MARKET, DON’T COME IN MY STORE FOR CEDDAR CHEESE!!”

 I came back to Lexington the Mecca of niceness. The Holy Land for nice people, but for me a living hell.

 Now I go to restaurants and the waiters tell me their names and sometimes want to sit down with Dana and me. When I place an order they usually compliment my good taste, or tell me a restaurant that makes the dish better. When I say we need a little time, they almost always say, “Take your time. No rush.” Often, this causes me to break out in a cold sweat.

 It’s not easy not being nice while I’m surrounded by all this gooey nice, not being able to control the mean thoughts bouncing around my head. Somehow, I know I should go back to New York City, where just about everybody is at least as unpleasant as I am. I long to sit on one of those benches, no doubt made for the elderly, who I use to think came that way. I know as soon as I sit down, someone will come along and tell me I’m sitting in his or her seat. Probably one of those waiters reminding me that they havn’t got all day.

“You Are Who You Are.”

 I AM WHO I AM,

 and I’m not nice!