Josh Gondelman - Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results

Before I left for college, my dad sat me down on the living room couch and gave me some advice.

When you go away to school, I want you to remember He paused, leaving me enough time to wonder exactly what kind of wisdom he was about to bestow on me. My dad is not prone to grand proclamations, and he also wasnt a big fan of his own college experience. I want you to remember, he continued, when you leave for college, dont bring dirty clothes with you. Youll have to do laundry right away, and youll go through all your change. Here, I want you to have this.

My father then got up from his chair, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an orange pill bottle, which felt like a hard turn for the conversation to take. Had my dad been dealing Adderall on the side, like a low-stakes Breaking Bad? He dropped the bottle into my hand, and it landed with an unexpected heft and a jingle. It was full of quarters. He sat back down, waited another beat, and continued his heart-to-heart in a way that felt less thoroughly prepped. At the very least, he hadnt brought any props for the second part of the talk.

I think youre going to do really well in college, he said, and then he paused again, as if considering whether to say the next part out loud or keep it to himself. You know, when you started high school, I never told you this, but I was worried youd be too nice and people would take advantage of you. Im really glad that didnt happen.

If Im being honest, I have to admit that I gave him good reason to fear for my safety and social well-being as I entered ninth grade. Id always had a wet paint personality, bright and shiny and vulnerable to the elements. I was proud that he trusted me to go off into the world, or at least as far as Brandeis University.

Thanks, I said.

Youre welcome.

We hugged, and he left the room, and I sat there with my medicine bottle full of quarters, most of which I probably ended up lending to someone who never paid me back.

Years later, people still got the same impression of me.

Have you met Gondelman? my friend Andy said to his friend Dave at a party when I was twenty-five. Hes super nice.

Daves face fell.

No, but hes funny, too, Andy reassured him.

My reputation often precedes me in social and professional circles, and not always in positive ways. For a comedian, nice can be shorthand for someones work being bland. And on a personal level, nice is about as meaningful as saying someone has decent breath or is usually punctual.

But, still, where Im known at all, Im known as a nice guy, which I think I am. But Im trying to be other things, too, even though sometimes Im not great at that. After all, its nice to waste eighty dollars trying to win your date a stuffed animal on the Coney Island boardwalk. But its certainly not financially responsible. And when you lose the carnival game, and the carny feels bad and gives you the prize anyway, its a little undignified, and youll wish youd set firmer boundaries. This is not a hypothetical example.

Theres a scene from the movie Road House that I think about a lot. I mean, there are a lot of scenes from that movie that play often in my mind: the ones where Patrick Swayze rips out a guys throat, the one where Ben Gazzaras character watches smugly as a monster truck drives over all the cars at a dealership owned by his enemy, the one where after receiving stitches from a doctor who asks if he enjoys pain Swayze responds, stoically, Pain dont hurt. Road House is either one of the best terrible movies ever made or the worst good movie ever made.

But there is one scene in particular I look to more than the others. Patrick Swayze (in the movie, hes called Dalton, but come on... its Patrick Swayze) has just taken over as head of security at the Double Deuce, a Kansas City dive bar where patrons throw bottles at the live band and employees have (uncomfortably explicit, if youre watching with your dad) sex with each other on their fifteen-minute breaks. Swayze/Dalton is outlining his new guidelines for the bars bouncers. The final tenet of his code is both simple and unexpected to the team of fistbrains working the door.

Be nice, he advises them. And when the staff questions him, he elaborates. If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he wont walk, walk him, but be nice. If you cant walk him, one of the others will help you, and you will both be nice.

Then theres a little back-and-forth between Dalton/Swayze and his employees regarding contingencies such as What if he calls my mama a whore? Its not important for our purposes here. Whats important is how Swayzeton concludes his speech:

I want you to be nice until its time to not be nice.

So, uh, how are we supposed to know when that is? says a large, violent employee with the IQ of chewed gum.

You wont, says Patrick Swayze. Ill let you know.

That last part always feels like such a relief to me. How great would it be to have someone in your life to tell you when to flip the switch from Nice to Badass; or, in my case, from Nice to Irritable? Because not every problem can be solved by nice-ing your way through it. And being Not Nice doesnt always imply being Mean. It could mean being Firm or Uncompromising or Indignant or Guarded or Assertive (all of which I am historically bad at being).

And Im not saying the right thing to do is to be, in all circumstances, Not Nice. That is an occasionally effective strategy that doesnt scale. Theres no valor in being a person who tells it like it is if you use that as a license to tell it mean and racist. Sometimes you are still working under the umbrella of Nice, but just being polite and agreeable isnt enough. Its much better in many cases to be Generous or Righteous or Considerate or Forgiving or Understanding. You cant do any of those things without being nice, but you sure as hell can be nice without doing that stuff, too.

All of this has been confusing to me, as a former Nice Boy who is trying to be a Good Guy. Because that means by turns being nice, and being kind of a dick if the situation calls for it. And then sometimes you have to be assertive. And other times its about taking a loss so someone you love can win, and weathering hard times while staying tender. And then sometimes being a good person means doing drugs in a bathroom stall in a bowling alley. And other times it means accepting a trophy for a film you didnt make that was entered into a festival it had no business being in. At least, I think thats what it means.