Every year, as we all run about doing our business of Holiday shopping and stressing, I think about Santa Claus sitting in his overstuffed Pottery Barn armchair up there in the North Pole trying to figure out who was Naughty and who was Nice this past year. As a rule my name, which will never be revealed to protect my own ass, usually appears somewhere in the Top Ten of Santa’s list of “Nice Girls” (who says we have to finish last) and it is this fact that has comforted and reassured me all these years that I won’t be overlooked during Christmastime. But as I get a little bit older, I’m beginning to realize that “being nice” doesn’t always get me what I want the other 364 days a year. Sure, it might mean that a gift card to Best Buy or Starbucks will come my way during the Holidays, but want about the other 11 months…what does “being nice” really get me? As I look back at all the good I’ve done over the last year, I begin to realize that all that good came with a price tag to myself, and caused me not only a host of inconveniences, but a ton of annoyances and a shitload of headaches. Whether I was asked to sit next to a friend’s 85 year old grandmother at dinner who doesn’t speak English and asked to entertain her with stories of New York City, or fully rearranged my life and neglected my own family and home to watch a friends aloof cat with bladder control issues for ten days, I decidedly have “been nice” to everyone, but not without some very specific detriments to my own happiness. Growing up in the Midwest where they inject “be nice byproducts” into your baby formula, I was always under the assumption that in order to be liked you have to be Nice. Now, I’m beginning to question whether being Nice is all its cracked up to be. If we say “Yes” when someone asks us for a favor when we really mean “Shit, are you serious?” isn’t that just a big fat lie? And according to Santa’s ridiculously high (but quite impeccable) list of standards, lying is downright Naughty. So, I’m thinking lets just cut the bullshit and say “No” and even “Hell, no!” if you feel like it, because saying “Yes” to every ridiculous request from friends and neighbors not only makes our lives exceedingly difficult, it forces us to blatantly lie to another human being, which to me is way more Naughty than Nice. So if being Naughty to others and saying “No” is going to save me twelve visits to a mailbox on the other side of town, one less cat scratch from an unruly feline, or 4 hours of boredom and insurmountable translation issues, than I’m all for being Naughty, because being Naughty to others = being Nice to me. So the next time someone asks you to do something you really don’t want to do, consider saying “No” to them and “Yes” to you. After all, why do you think Santa has all those little elves helping him out and Mrs. Claus slaving away in the kitchen all day. Do you really think he’d watch that freakshow pee stained cat of yours?
