Remember this? “Roses are red, violets are blue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” It was always the annoying girls in grade school who said that, the Lucy Van Pelts of McKinley Elementary School in Wauwatosa, WI, but I now can see they had a point – even if that point was delivered in a most annoying fashion. It’s just as easy to go out and be nice to the people we encounter as it is to be nasty and unpleasant? Maybe it’s even easier, given how much more draining it is to be venomous. I have taken up the practice of looking for ways to complement people I meet as I go about my business during the day. I’m not phony about it, but if I like something I see someone wearing I make it a point to tell them. If they have cute kids, I comment – and if I don’t, I tell them their children are “precious…” and they still feel good about it. The strange things is that this practice actually makes me feel better, at least in part because we all want to spend our day surrounded by people worth complementing – it’s much more pleasant that spending our day around shabby people with unattractive (as opposed to “precious”) children. The only difference is in our own decision to see things differently!