Nice: Michael Crowe freestyles with a word once banned by his teacher

My idea of a nice thought is: “I want to punch every (before I carry on with this piece – sorry these brackets are far too long – I’d like every time the word “nice” appears here for you to imagine that word shaking slightly on the page, microscopically, as if it’s struggling to break free from the paper. There’s a faint golden glow behind this movement, so faint that you dismiss it as nothing. Let’s say you don’t even notice it. When you reach the last word of the article, if you remember, I’d like you to imagine all of the trembling “nice” words to finally break free and rise up into your eyes along with some sort of heavenly wood-nymph flute music. Once in your eyes, the words will splash around, euphorically; backstroking, giggling, hugging, melting, causing you absolutely no discomfort, on the contrary, they cause a delightful refreshing feeling, providing you with a stunning clarity of vision and a pure-hearted, zesty, thigh-slapping enthusiasm for the rest of this magazine and the remainder of your life beyond the last page. Ok now back to it.) human being alive.”

All people. One punch. All animals too. Trees, flowers, walls, photos, everything. But (OMG a twist!) I mean punching in a soft tiny tap on the shoulder way, a little encouraging “Come on, you can do it!” slow-motion type shoulder tap-punch of zero threat, a baby snowflake landing on a ghost kitten’s tongue, a flour-sprinkled “I believe in you” bit of dainty anti-violence, 100% misguided patronising enthusiasm chum-buddy tropical sunshining punch.

Everyone! Except for Robin Thicke, who gets a punch in the face.

Talking of faces, my first English teacher (had one) banned our class from using the word “nice” to describe anything. She saw it as a nothing word, bland, tepid, ziltchy. I can imagine her chain smoking, marking endless essays full of stuff like: “We all pointed up at the sunset because it was nice.” Or: “Finally, finally, finally, I was looking into my mother’s eyes for the first time and it was nice, but not nice nice, just sort of half nice, like nice cut across the middle horizontally, lower half of nice.”

So that particular teacher brainwashed me against nice. Nice was Evil. No other words were banned. “F”was not banned. “C” was not banned. But this one, understandably, was.

Ok now windscreen wiper all of that away and let’s do a brief run-through the Louvre of nice. What is nice? Nice to me – maybe nice at its peak – is a sort of advanced empathy. It is nice to think about others, not just about what they might be feeling (yawn), but about the generally unconsidered details of their weird, haphazard, herky-jerky, oh-not-this-again, reversing whale, off to bed, I think I love you, rainy, locked-bathroom, magazine-reading lives.