February 13th, 2009

Niceness

So, my “Family Day is Fascist” position is not winning many supporters (Family Day, right up there with eyebrows and butter on popcorn on the list of things everyone else finds benign but Rebecca despises). Which is fine, really, I probably need less arm-waving rants in my life, anyway. And since Family Day weekend coincides with Valentine’s Day weekend this year, and last year I finally came up with a suitable position on V-Day, I have extrapolated that to include Family Day, another day of dictated affection!

And the position is, of course, for many of us, families and romantic others are amazing presences and deserving of whatever they desire on any given holiday and also every other day of the year. And for some, that is not the case, temporarily or permanently, for whatever reason. Which might be fine with them, or not at all fine with them, but is certainly none of the government’s business! Sorry. Arm-waving.

*Anyway*, I think there a lot of important people in everyone’s life that don’t have a formal title like mother, sister, partner, second-cousin. I think that people who we interact with in small ways–the colleague that checks the printer and finds your lost invoices, the supermarket cashier with the really long fingernails who is still superfast, the woman who helped me scramble out of a snowbank a couple weeks ago–are also deserving of a good deal of niceness. Maybe we won’t be cooking dinner for them Saturday night (man, that cashier would be surprised), but maybe this weekend could just be a weekend of niceness to everyone.

I guess I don’t like the restrictions of these “days”–this is who you should be kind to, *exclusively*. But there’s nothing stopping me, someone pointed out, from expanding the definition of “family” to include everyone I like. Which I think the OED people would have something to say about, but in the interests of limited arm-waving, I’ll try it. And then I’m going to try expanding the day into the rest of the year.

I promise not to cook dinner for you unless you want me to.

I’ll dig a tunnel / from my window to yours
RR