In a word . . . Nice

I get into trouble with nice people. I knew a man who equated popularity with lack of character. Real people had enemies, he said. Holding a conviction, he said, was like one of Newton’s laws. It provoked an equal and opposite reaction.

In journalism you can make enemies with the ease of a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down. There have been moments I had to conclude the old maxim “by their friends shall ye know them” was old hat.

No. “Show me your enemies and I’ll tell you who you are.”

I am glad to say I have great enemies. They are the sort of people I’d be tempted to boast about having as enemies, were I to boast.

Who would want them as friends?

Back to the nice people. In this column last month I made claims about my siblings and myself.

I said of us that “all conceptions were immaculate and the end product ended up under a head of cabbage, which is where I was found”. Meaning it had nothing to do with sex, which didn’t exist when I was young. Ours were just wonderful, clean, pristine conceptions. Look at us!

A reader took the trouble of contacting me to say: "The phrase immaculate conception, which is of course a term used by the Catholic Church, relates to Our Lady and the belief that she was born without original sin on her soul. It has nothing to do with sex, with or without a partner.

"It relates to Mary herself being born and has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. The concept of Our Lady conceiving and giving birth to Jesus Christ without having had sex is another tenet of the Catholic Church and is referred to as the 'Virgin Birth'." The lady is, of course, right.

My use of the word immaculate, however, in the context was not meant in a doctrinal sense.

Even if our mother remains a virgin as do the mothers of all Irish men. It’s only our partners who are not.

Nice is an exception among four-letter words as it means amiability and being pleasant. But it does not have an immaculate origin in Middle English. There it means something foolish or stupid. From the Latin nescius (ne-scius/scire not knowing), ignorant or incapable. Ahem.

Such character.

[ inaword@irishtimes.com ]