Happiness Is Possible and Some People Really Are Nice–But Can They be Successful?

Tonight, Bella’s homework assignment was to observe a family member (i.e. me, myself, moi) watching TV. Seems like the purpose of the assignment was to point out how pre-adolescent viewing can cause children to not have realistic relationships with other human beings because television characters don’t have eye contact with children which teaches children to not have normal, eye contact relationships with other humans (well, I don’t exactly believe that television is the primary culprit for this event–I’m thinking that it’s more like YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, texting, ipoding, emailing, cell phoning, IMing, MyYearbook, YourYearBook, Help.com, and well, a whole bunch of other electronic devices that don’t have, um, human eyeballs– are you following me here?)

Anyway, I happily oblige Bella’s request for television participation and turned on House. A patient on the show is, according to House, TOO FRIGGIN’ nice. So, he must be neurologically sick, but he’s been this way for 11 years, so how can that be? The entire thrust of the show is proving that if the patient’s niceness is caused by an illness, then House’s nastiness can also be caused by an illness. But half of House’s staff is hell bent on believing some people can simply be NICE without having some type of Neurological problem. In the end, House is right, as usual, and the patient has some weird parasite that has swollen his brain, and made him nice…for 11 years. Now the guy doesn’t like Ketchup anymore and his wife is all worried. House is still an ass.

So, what in the hell does the House episode have to do with anything anymore than the fact that my refrigerator still is sprouting an unidentifiable odor, and the dog hasn’t peed outside in two days? Well, just that it gave me pause while I rant and rave at my daughter to be nice, at least to me (she seems much nicer to her friends, teachers, other kids’ parents, than that mouth she is to me). She believes it’s ok to rant and rave at me (though where in God’s name she gets that, I don’t know) as though I am one of her friends.

“I suppose, you think you can speak that way to me to me? Is that the the way your friends speak to THEIR parents?”

“Yeah, and their parents are so much more cool. They’re not so parenty, jeez”, she spouts as though it’s a dirty word.

And then I thought is nice really that good? I mean, is Hillary nice? John? Barack, is Barack really nice? Rupurt Murdock. He isn’t nice. Maybe nice is over rated. Look at House. He isn’t nice. He’s hot, but he’s not nice. And, I would bet, Hugh Lawrie is a lot more successful than Eugene Cuzzins. Maybe it’s time for me to get a new boyfriend. In the meantime, I definitely think I should limit Bella’s TV watching. She might just turn out too nice. But to my knowledge, I haven’t observed any problems with her giving me the eye, er, I mean eye contact.