Niceity

I think I've been slowly losing my niceness. If you knew me in my high school days, I wasn't just nice back then. I was Nice. It was my defining characteristic, the ruling factor that was noticed and praised (much to my dismay, at times - what personality trait is as bland and dismissive as "nice"?) But for me it was true. I saw beauty in every person, and found each human as wonderful, perfect, and worthy. And as everyone knows, an excess of anything is bad. My Niceness caused me to see myself as the only fallible and unworthy person in the world. It lead to a summer ruled by wasted afternoons, curled in bed telling myself how horrid I was, and imagining the day when everyone's true repulsion for me would come to the surface and I would be finally shunned by society as I deserved. And every day people continued to stay by me, I was grateful, and even more convinced of their saintliness, and my terribleness in comparison.

So as one can imagine, the initial departure of my Niceness was met with joy and relief. I began to see people as they are - fallible, imperfect, and, most importantly, my equals. My love for my friends and peers didn't change, but I was now willing to see some disruptions in the friendship as partially their faults, not solely mine. I was becoming bolder and less likely to take abuse, which was a definite positive.

However, this led to certain realizations about certain friendships that may have been, in my blindness, abusive. I realized a friend is not a friend if they actively resent and hurt you. And though I felt liberated from these situations, I became another thing I was not previously - Angry. I was angry at myself for blindly trusting people (and institutions - I'm sure I'll rant about my sour relationship with the once-trusted educational institution some other time), and angry at them for taking advantage of my innocence. Thing anger about a thing I could not change turned to Bitterness.

And in my Bitterness, I began to see things in people I didn't like. Foolishness, arrogance, and vacancy of mind bothered me immensely when I viewed them in other people. Only recently - only since my life has righted itself and started moving forward again after several technical difficulties - have I began to enjoy people fully again. But I am not back to that ever assured all-loving always sweet place called Nice.

Anyway, that's the back story. This all lead up to the day the washer broke. I had put off laundry for too long, and my clothes had begun to form strata in my hamper. I finally loaded my clothes into the shiny silver bowels of the washing machine and settled down in the study room to wait. When the time came to unload, one washing machine was finished, but the other still read eight minutes. Although it struck me as odd, since I loaded each at the same time, I decided it was no big deal and to wait a few minutes. I waited eight. Then ten. Then fifteen. The timer still read eight and the washer still whirred, keeping my clothes in a purgatory of cleanliness. I opened the lid. The barrel was half filled with purple water, and my clothes - mostly absorbent, spongy sweaters - floated in the murky liquid. Now, keep in mind my nose was running and my head was throbbing from the remnants of a passing cold. I was not pleased.

I jabbed my finger into the elevator Up button - I'd be damned if this machine would make me take the stairs - and rode up one floor to the lobby where the RA's sat listlessly counting boxes and listening to music.

"Um, I'm sorry to bother you," I said in the sweetest way, "But I think my washer's broken. And all my clothes are inside and it's filled with water."

The pretty girl at the window said, "Oh, um, I guess you need to call the washing machine company."

"The number's on the washing machine," reported a large woman in the back of the room. My face scrunched a little, probably noticeably. I didn't see how I needed to be the one to report this - it was not my washing machine, but the building's that broke. The building should call. But instead of bothering the poor people more, I said thank you and left.

I tromped back downstairs and opened the washer lid. What was once half full of murky water was now completely full, and if I wanted to grab my clothing I'd have to reach in past my elbow, almost to my shoulder. I grabbed a sweater and started to ring it out, but it was made of such absorbent material that no matter how my squeezed and no matter how much ice cold water numbed my arm and dribbled down my shirt, it still remained sopping wet. I called to report the broken washer, hung up, and sighed.

I rode up the elevator again and stomped over to the RA window. "I'm sorry to bother you again," I said a little less sweetly, "But my clothes are in the washer and the water is up to the rim." (which was almost true) "What should I do?" 

"Um," said the RA, "You could ring your clothes out."

"These are sweaters," I said less sweetly still. "There's no ringing these out."

"Let's go talk to Sarah" (or something - I wasn't in the mood to be remembering names) "She's in charge of things like this."

We went into a room reminiscent of a principal's office, where a woman close to my age sat at a huge brown desk with much authority.

"You can ring them out," she said.

"Thank you," I said icily. And I left for the basement again.

Once downstairs, I wrenched my clothes from the bowels of the washing machine and put them in another to rinse the soap out of them. As I payed for another load of already washed wash, I still felt dissatisfied. I dialed the number on the washer again.

"Hello, Hercules Washers howmayweassistyou?" trumpeted a nasally New York accent.

"Hello, I just called about about a broken washing machine at 1 East second street?"

"What? Oh, yes I just spoke to you."

"Yes. I want a refund for the money I lost in the broken machine."

"Oh. Alright. How much money did you lose?"

"How much is a regular load?"

"One seventy five."

"That much."

"You want us to refund you... one seventy five?"

"Yes."

"Ok... We'll do that."

I hung up the phone feeling triumphant.

Until I realized I'd have to pay for another dryer load as well.