You didn't have to be so nice. I would have liked you anyway.

It was very interesting the first time I watched the Bullwinkle Show as an adult.  Beyond making me laugh hysterically I was completely puzzled at how I could have even remotely liked it when I was a kid.  Even as a precocious kid as myself couldn't have understood half of the allusions and asides.

I find a lot of things like that now as I have moved through time.  I see many things now through different eyes and get a whole different picture of things.  For instance, being part of Adult Children of Alcoholics has given me a whole different take on the first two lines of Steven Boone and John Sebastian's song You Didn't Have to Be So Nice.

The opening lyric goes:

You didn't have to be so nice.
I would have liked you anyway
If you had just looked once or twice
And gone upon your quiet way.

What the song is actually about, of course, is a first encounter between a couple where she is trying to impress him and he is saying that he was already impressed with her.  That is a wonderful thought and a part of why I love the song so much.

However, looking at the words through the prism that is my romantic life puts a sad turn on that, that if I was the singer, I would be saying to a woman that you do not have to be nice to me, that you can treat me like dirt and I will still like you.  It is a proposition in that light from a pathetic place.

And in all candor, without the factor of abuse, that is sort of how I originally took the meaning of it, that I would have liked you without any input from you.  This comes from the same empty loveless place I spoke of a day or two ago.

I hope to again genuinely feel the cheery, happy, amorous feelings this song brings to me inside of a relationship, but hopefully this time from a place where love is not quite so one sided.

—§—

Because there is no ACoA or ACA chapter where I live, I have only attended meetings on line.  And the people who had been conducting the online meetings haven't been doing so lately.  So when someone else asked about whether the meetings were discontinued, I made it a point to be there tonight and I conducted a meeting even though I haven't been completely through the program and have not had any training on it.

I did it because the sessions I attended really helped me and I wanted to be able to give that to someone else.  Lest you think me too altruistic, I also wanted to get some of that from participating in a meeting, and if that meant I had to facilitate it for that to happen, then so be it.

It seemed like it went well and I am extremely grateful for the Adult Children that made it possible.  You warmed my heart tonight.  Thank you.

—§—

Just in case you have never heard of the song in question, here is a YouTube video of it.