
So a few eons ago, when I was in junior high I had to take some sort of health class. I don't remember the name of the class, but I have a vague recollection that it was supposed to cover sex ed, hygiene and other stuff. Including self esteem. Yeah...
One day we were all told to take a piece of paper and write our names across the top. The paper would then be passed around the room and everyone else was supposed to write one positive thing, or a compliment of some sort. I tried to be creative "has pretty hair," "is really smart" or "has a great smile" something.
When my paper got back to me there was apparently a fairly unanimous feeling about me. I was "nice."
Every single person wrote just that one word. Nice. Oh wait, I take that back, one person wrote 'really nice.'
I've never felt so completely bland in my entire life. Which is probably why I remember it so well. In the eyes of my fellow students, at least so much as they wanted to write down, I was completely uninteresting. I was merely nice. I wanted to be interesting, to have something about me stand out a little- tell me my hair was pretty, or that I had a nice smile. But no. Just nice. At the time- nice was right up there with being 'cute.' Lord love a duck how I hated being called cute! Pretty, that's what I wanted to be. Hey, gorgeous would have worked for me too. ;) But cute? Oi....
I've come to terms with cute, it no longer garners the speaker the withering glare of spite. I've actually come to like that word. Yes, cute has been redeemed, much like the word 'soon.' Soon was an 'I HATE IT!' word for awhile (as in "so honey, when are we going to get married?" "soon" *grrs* I did end up asking him...)
Nice, in terms of a person's personality- that one I'm not quite good with yet. As a term of exclamation, ie as a response to a particularly funny anecdote- I will use the word nice.
However, this one piece of paper, with Nice written on it 26 some times still has a minor effect. For all of you who have posted the 'respond to this and I'll tell you why you rock' meme- you may have noticed I didn't reply to a single one. I guess I'm still afraid I'll only ever be 'nice.' It's not at all a bad thing to be nice... But I don't want that to be all there is.