IT'S NICE TO BE NICE

We recently had a visit from a lovely nurse who is with the Homecare of Lancaster. She couldn’t believe that we were from New York. Evidently, in the course of her work here in several of our Sun City Carolina Lakes homes, she has run into some very unpleasant people from above the Mason-Dixon Line.  Not everyone from the north has given her a hard, rude time, and some from the south could also use a lesson or two in manners, but we surprised her by being so nice. SCCL people I ask you: what is with that?     

This woman, highly trained, supremely efficient and kindness itself, was in our home to help us - not the other way ’round. She has a lovely southern accent, as you would you expect from someone born and bred in Lancaster. She said she feels as though northerners view folks with southern accents as working with less than a full set of brains. But you know, to her, we are the ones with the accents. (Accents are funny things. Very often in the early hours of the day in the Lake House pool there are five of us with accents: one New Yorker, one Georgia Peach, one English-born, one German-born, and one Frenchman.  O.K., which one of us has the accent? And remember, two of those five speak more than one language. How many do you speak?) Accents tell others where we were born, not who we are and how much we know. That can be told by what we say and how we say it.           

I know that many of SCCL’s residents think nothing of giving a hard, rude time to the folks at the Lake House desk. The denizens of the desk say that a thick skin has to go along with the job, but that’s a sad commentary on how we live here. I can imagine myself manning the desk and spying some grim-looking resident coming up to face me. I’d think “Oh boy, here comes trouble.”  How much nicer it would be for me to greet a smiling resident with a sincere “How may I help you.”  If they said “I’ve got a big problem here and I need you to help me solve it,” their smile would already have put me on their side. Simple as that: it’s nice to be nice.

The stories told by the nurse or desk personnel are not unique. Many of our local merchants tell similar stories. In my humble opinion folks, this rude, ‘I’m better than you are’, ‘you are here to serve me’, ‘the world owes me a living’ attitude has got to stop. You are giving the rest of us a bad reputation. Ain’t none of us so wonderful, so rich, so absolutely right, or even so old, that we can be rude and thoughtless to others, no matter what their status, station or calling in life. 

Think of, truly digest, the words of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.   Get beyond your pain or your problem, be pleasant if it kills you, and help will be given to you sooner and with a smile.  ‘As you would have them do unto you’ - fate forbid some folks should think to be as rude in return as some are to them. That would be nasty, and it might even come to fisticuffs. (Oooo, can I watch?)  

There are all sorts of mottoes and sayings that could be trotted out to tell you to have more regard for others - you probably know them all.  These two will suffice: ‘Remember the Golden Rule’, and ‘It’s Nice to be Nice’. Now - go to your mirror and practice your smile.