A Year of Nice May be Called For

This has been coming for a long time. It's time to be a nice person, or at least practice being one. It's not so much that I don't think I'm nice enough, but I think I could be nicer on a more consistent basis. The scary persona isn't working for me. I mean it is, but it's scaring me even. For example, I ordered my books from the campus bookstore on May 3 for a summer session course that begins on May 17. I have the written confirmation to prove it. Last Friday, I sent all my students an e-mail to say hi and welcome to the class and go buy the book and so on. So, on Monday, one of my future new students writes to me saying that the bookstore HAS NO BOOK ORDER ON FILE FOR MY COURSE!!!! Now I know this can't be right, so I give them a call and sure enough, they DON"T HAVE ANY RECORD OF A BOOK ORDER!!!! This would not be the first time this has happened, so when the bookstore personnelperson shifts into "I'll go check on this and give you a call" mode, I reply in my best ape-in-a-cage-on-extra-adrenaline mode: "YOU WILL NOT CALL ME BACK. YOU WILL NOT CHECK ON THIS. YOU WILL GET ME THE MOST UBIQUITOUS LOGIC BOOK IN AMERICA RIGHT NOW. YOU WILL HAVE SUFFICIENT COPIES FOR ALL MY STUDENTS BY THE FIRST DAY OF CLASSES THIS THURSDAY !!!!! And I hung up the phone. Then I called the regional sales rep and told her what happened and she gave me a lot of sympathy and five differient solutions just in case the bookstore didn't come through. By 4 pm, everyone connected with the bookstore had left me 90 second long voicemail messages assuring me that the problem had been taken care of and then the adrenalized ape need not tear their hearts out this time.

So that Sicilian thing I do really really works. But now I have an anger hangover. Which means I think I scared myself more than anyone. If I could do stuff like this and then feel terrific later and even better the next day, I would know that I am the sociopath I was raised to be. But I'm not, so what should I do about it? Be nice? Maybe.