A woman offered to stand aside for us to order first at a restaurant counter. A driver stopped on a busy street to let me step across.
Why? Midwestern nice.
We’ve spent six days in Kansas City, Missouri, where nice is like air – all around. Store clerks and customers gab like friends. Restaurant servers approach with chatty sweetness. Motorists almost always signal turns.
We’re visiting from Louisiana, in the Deep South, with its own reputation for hospitality. But “Midwestern nice” is different. More authentic? I dunno. It’s certainly less stressed. It also seems happier, less obligatory, more sincere.
Take city traffic. Back home, motorists are impatient, quick to lean hard into their horns. Here, no one’s blared at me in a week. Nor have I.
I lived in the Midwest for more than two decades – and somehow remained oblivious to this culture of nice. I see now how Midwesterners bathe in nice.
Nice clearly encourages nice. The result is a swirl of spontaneous nice, a flywheel of nice that runs on the fuel of ever more nice.
Nice is nice.
Nice is definitely better than not nice.