Lev David: Bring back all that's nice

I am not sure when somebody decided that the word "nice" was no longer nice.

Once, a mediocre English teacher forbade our class to use it in our writing. It was a style no-no, she said. She must have read it somewhere, since her relationship with style seemed generally strained, both in her words and her wardrobe.

Whenever and wherever the anti-nice-propaganda started, the sentiment spread virulently. Nice was insipid, we were told. Weak. And we became the good people who stood by and did nothing as the genocide of those four, innocent little letters began.

Calling something or someone "nice" was thought of as a coy admission of disinterest, or worse, that it/him/her wasn't significant enough to warrant the forming of a proper opinion. But that was only the start of it.

Nice, shooed by an embarrassed world into the back alleys of the vocabulary like some shivering street child, fell victim to that perverse, sweaty villain of language, sarcasm. "That's nice," came to mean: "Actually, that's rubbish. I'm just too smarmy to come out and say it."

Gurus of style, wearing their full-length leather jackets and sunglasses indoors, waved their arms about, flashing wild heroin eyes, hunting the nices out of the pages they once gently grazed in. Those they missed were caught in nice-traps. No nice was safe.

We were encouraged, nay, implored, nay, ordered, to be certain. To give our sentences balls. Things couldn't be just nice. Why not great? Grand! Amazing! Incredible! Strong words! Definite words, prickling with invisible exclamation marks!

Sentences, running wild along neon lines, were pinned to pages with rivet guns and throwing knives. There was no doubt about what anybody was thinking. They just said it.

More than an attack on a word, though, this was an attack on a state of mind. This was just a small part of the tyrannical land grab for the ungentle world of extremes - hard heroes, fast women and fast food. No more Mr Nice Guy. Nice guys finish last. Have a nice day? I don't think so.

Nice isn't of this world. It walks into a room and picks its seat well enough, but shifts in it uncomfortably, looking distractedly around the room. I like it for that. I can't defend nice against everything. It has a definite indefiniteness about it, but is that so bad? There's a sweet honesty to middleness, and any number of things are nice in the nicest possible way.

Ever had a random Tuesday that feels, from the morning, like the lazy end of a Friday? You might not get much work done, but that's okay. And nice.

Mint tea is nice. Having a cat curled at your feet as you work at your desk is nice. The way babies' hands close around your giant fingers is nice. And amazing. But nice, especially.

Having somebody cover you with a blanket when you fall asleep in front of the TV is nice. Particularly when you both know that you're not really asleep, but neither says so. Semi-colons are nice; like the word nice, in fact, they're a sort of compromise between two too-definite things.

Austen is nice. (I'm talking about Jane, the writer, though. Not Stone Cold Steve, the professional wrestler. He's not nice. He's great!)

And, yes, the word is sometimes a thing to hide one's true feelings behind. But does everything need to be so courageous?

"You're nice," says she to he, using the word as a Spanish fan behind which to hide her giveaway smile.

The way I see it, there aren't so many words in the world that we can afford to lose one, let alone systematically exterminate it. In uncertain days, we need words for uncertain things. Words which don't give too much away and maybe even lie a little.

Because, truly, the biggest lie of all is certainty. And that's not nice.

* Lev David is a writer and radio producer-presenter from Durban, South Africa.