I don’t have nice days anymore. I don’t bother with that. I’m beyond the nice day; I feel I’ve outgrown the whole idea. Besides, I’ve already had my share of nice days. Why should I be hogging them all? Let someone else have a few.
Naturally, everyone still wants me to have one. Every person I meet wants me to have a nice day. Especially clerks.
“Have a nice day.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna gimme my fuckin’ change, please? I’m triple-parked!”
Some of them are really insistent.
“I said have a nice day! Do it!”
“All right, all right! I’ll give it a shot.”
That’s the trouble with “Have a nice day.” It puts all the pressure on you. Now you have to go out and somehow arrange to have a positive experience. All because of some loose-lipped clerk.
Have a nice day, indeed! Maybe I don’t feel like having a nice day. Maybe—just maybe—I’ve had twenty-seven nice days in a row, and I’m ready for a crappy day. You never hear that, do you?
“Have a crappy day!”
“Why, thank you. Right back at ya! And to your wonderful family as well!”
A crappy day; that would be easy. No trouble at all. No planning involved. Just get out of bed and start moving around.
I think what bothers me most about the whole “nice day” thing is that word “nice.” It’s a weak word. It doesn’t have a lot of character. Nice.
“Isn’t he nice? He is so nice. And she’s nice too! Isn’t that nice? How nice they are!”
I don’t care for it. It’s like “fine.” Another weak word.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
Bullshit! Nobody’s fine. Hair is fine.
“How’s your hair?
“Fine.”
That makes more sense to me.
Some guys are “great ”! You ever meet those guys?
“This is great! Isn’t this great? Goddamn, this is great! Look, they’re gonna kill that guy! Isn’t that great?”
Not me. I’m not nice, I’m not fine, I’m not great. People ask me how I am, I don’t give them any superlatives; nothing to gossip about. I tell them I’m “fairly decent.” Or “relatively okay.” I might say, “I’m moderately neato.” And if I’m in a particularly jaunty mood, I’ll tell them, “I’m not unwell, thank you.”
That one always pisses them off. Because they have to figure it out for themselves.