As you methodically tied the bunny ears of your shoe laces, you heard your kindergarten teacher say, “Play nice, children.” You raced out to the playground to grab a ball, getting there before everyone else, and heard the playground aid yell, “Play nice!” You dropped the ball and backed away to let the others have the first crack at Four Square. You stood by hoping they would play nice and invite you. Sometimes they did. Most times they “forgot” to play nice.
You’d been hearing the words, “Play nice!” since your sibling arrived. You learned quickly about sharing and taking turns. That’s also when you learned that everything wasn’t about you.
Those are hard lessons to learn, and when you’d complain that you hadn’t had your turn in awhile, you were reminded to play nice.
Daughters come with a handbook. If you’re lucky, your folks pitched the book and gave it their best shot. Sons come with handbooks, too, but the first page of their book does not start with, “Must always play nice.”
Throughout your schooling years, playing nice became a habit – your default setting. When the teacher asked for someone to go up to the board to diagram a sentence, you played nice and stayed in your seat. When the art instructor announced that 8 lucky students could have their work displayed at the public library, you didn’t submit yours, because you were playing nice.
Somewhere toward the end of high school, playing nice turned into not standing up for yourself. The habit of playing nice became more and more self-defeating.
You took the shittier shifts at work, including the extra shifts made available by co-workers’ hangovers or missed alarm clocks. You finished the group project in the marketing class, to save your grade. They were out chugging beers while you were saving their grades, too.
Never mind all the crap you put up with from guys, because you were busy playing nice.
Years later, you have made playing nice your super power.
You are the first one called when they need a warm body for the PTA’s Circus Night, down at the school. You always host the annual neighborhood yard sale. You never fail to bring two dishes to the holiday pot luck, and you always stay late to clean up. You shuttle all the other kids to soccer, but wouldn’t dare ask someone to give your kid a ride. You just hope they’ll remember to play nice and offer.
You handle rude comments as if Miss Manners had tattooed the inside of your arm with the code for “How to Respond When Others Forget to Play Nice.”
You put up with more than your fair share in your marriage because playing nice has become your second skin.
Now where are you?
You have casserole dishes for pot lucks, enough for all the churches in the Midwest. You have memories of the customers’ faces who picked up sandwiches on their way to the football game you skipped so you could work an extra shift. You have too many miles on your old beater from shuttling other people’s kids.
You wonder if anyone would like you if you stopped playing nice.
You don’t know how to NOT play nice.
Your spirit has been snuffed.
You are bone-deep tired.
You are sick of the comments, the excuses, the fakes and the users.
You couldn’t play nice if it meant saving your soul.
You couldn’t play nice if they paid you.
Where has playing nice ever gotten you?
Don’t you dare tell your daughter to play nice.