When “Have A Nice Day” is Considered Weird

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It’s not that hard to stick out in middle school. The unspoken code of social conduct is unyielding and inflexible. Anything outside of those narrow parameters is "weird," and weird makes kids uncomfortable.

Our Life Skills classroom for special education students is at the end of a long hallway. Students in the program run the school store, sell chocolate pretzels for Valentine’s Day, and run outside for adaptive P.E. They are relatively isolated from the rest of the school. However, some of the students in Life Skills are accepted into the social order, while others are not. 

For example, Jimmy is an athletic 13-year old whose participation in sports puts him in frequent contact with many of the boys in town. Though Jimmy is practicing subtraction while his peers are learning algebra, his attractive appearance along with his athleticism has earned him friends outside of Life Skills. Jimmy doesn’t make the other kids uncomfortable. He wears cool clothes, plays sports, and doesn’t draw attention to himself. They know he’s not in their classes, and they sense that he’s got challenges they don’t. But they include him because Jimmy may be different, but he’s not weird.

Nina is also a Life Skills student. Her wide-eyed, childlike smile never fades. She doesn’t spend too much time on her appearance, and she doesn’t have many opportunities to socialize with other girls. Talking with Nina, one gets the feeling that she lives in a delightful, utopian world. She doesn’t notice the other girls shrink away from her enthusiastic greetings and waves. She never wonders why she has no friends. She is the exuberantly joyful child people adored when she was three years old, but whom they feel uncomfortable around now that she’s 12.

Jimmy and Nina are in the same Life Skills class. They are both sweet kids, but Jimmy is accepted and included in the social interaction of the school. Nina isn’t. Jimmy blends in. Nina sticks out.

Every day, Nina compliments girls on their hair, their outfits, their shoes. The girls just ignore her, giggle and run away. I recently asked some of them why they never acknowledge Nina. The girls looked at one another, unsure what to say.

“She’s too nice,” one of them reluctantly offered.

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s not bad. It’s just weird.”

A few moments later, Nina bounced past us, waving and telling us to have a nice day. She told one of the girls that her shoes were pretty. She told us to have a nice day. Again. I didn’t say a word. “Have a nice day!” Nina repeated. One of the girls suddenly burst out, “You too!”  Nina smiled as widely as her mouth would stretch and said, “You have a nice day too!”

All Nina wanted us to do was have a nice day, and that wasn’t weird at all.

Sofen is a Teaching Tolerance blogger and middle school writing teacher in Sparta, N.J.