Are Utahns Too Nice? (May 2023)

 

Are Utahns Too Nice?

By Kerry Soper

At the risk of offending someone, can I suggest that we Utahns are often too worried about offending someone? Whole generations of us were raised to pleasers, to avoid contention at all costs. 

 There are upsides, of course, to this collective niceness: neighbors will lend you stuff—like food or power tools (maybe even a vital organ). But there are downsides as well: passive aggressivity is a fine art form in many Utah families; we have a hard time saying no to things, like multiple church callings or tedious social events; and opportunists, like summer sales bros, and MLM hucksters, often take advantage of that chronic friendliness. 

 Finally, Utahns sometimes tell dumb, white lies just to avoid awkward conversations. These fibs of convenience sometimes spiral out of control, however, as I learned in this cautionary tale. 

Back in the mid-1990s, when we moved out of state to attend grad school, I had to furnish an apartment in an unfamiliar city before the arrival of my wife and toddler. I started this project by responding to a newspaper ad from a young woman selling bookcases. Our transaction began well: a pleasant chat over the phone (a landline, since this was pre-cellphones), during which I received directions to her apartment. 

But then I got lost on the way to her place and had to call back several times from pay phones. She must have misheard me during one of those connections because when I arrived at her door, she said, “Hi, Jesse!” 

I should have just corrected her, saying, “Sorry—my name is actually Kerry.” But the Utah-raised pleaser in me hesitated, not wanting to embarrass her or to make things awkward, and so I just went with it, thinking it would be easier to accept this new identity for the short duration of our interactions. 

The first glitch in my plan arrived when I tried to pay her by check. Freezing, I realized, “I can’t sign a fake name on a check—one that I don’t even know how to spell.” Apologizing, I excused myself and sped to the nearest ATM. 

When I returned, she discovered  that some pieces for the bookcases were missing, but promised to contact me when they showed up. This led to another tense moment as I wrote my phone number on a piece of paper, hesitated briefly, and then scrawled “JESSEE” above it with a flourish, impulsively adding the extra E. I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I finally left her apartment. 

A week passed, my wife and child arrived, and my brain was happily repressing the whole alternate identity situation. Then one afternoon, the anxiety came rushing back as I played the following message on our answering machine: “Hey Jessee! I found those missing bookcase pieces!” 

In a panic, I realized this recording might confuse my wife. Trying to act calm, I put my hand over the receiver and whispered, “Hey, honey, just a heads up—I’ll be using a different name for this phone call. It’s no big deal…” Super curious now, she watched as I mumbled into the receiver, “Uh, yeah—this is… uh—Jessee, calling you back?” The young woman responded breezily: “Hey, Jessee… Sorry for the hassle. My boyfriend and I can swing by your place in about an hour to drop off those pieces.” 

I sheepishly explained the whole situation to my wife. Already familiar with my habit of telling complicated white lies, she enjoyed a good, five-minute laugh. She sobered up pretty quickly, though—probably because she realized that she would now be an accessory to whatever pointless long con I was trying to pull. 

When the couple arrived, it was my wife, weirdly, who overdid it. She kept overusing my new name (“Jessee’s really excited about the new bookcase…”), and getting too interested in their personal lives (“So how many nieces and nephews do you have?”). My throat was too dry to add anything to the mix. I just sat there with a goofy smile, praying for the ordeal to end. 

Finally, things started to wind down, and the young couple got up to leave. (Yes!) I could feel the anxiety lifting from my shoulders. The stress rushed right back in, though, when the boyfriend (who must have been charmed by my wife’s weird hospitality) suggested, “Hey, maybe we could all go out to dinner sometime?” 

I tried to kill this idea as nicely as possible: “Yeah, sounds fun… maybe we check back in a few months?” Confused by this tepid response, the couple wandered towards the front door, which I was eagerly holding open. As they passed over the threshold, though, disaster finally arrived: the boyfriend abruptly turned back and asked, “Hey, what was your name again?” 

My brain must have prematurely let its guard down (with them leaving) because I automatically responded without thinking, “Kerry.” 

A jolt of panic ran through my body as the young woman, further down the walk, whipped her head around and said, “What?” I slowly tried to close the door on her as she walked back. She stopped me though, asking, “What was that? What did you say your name was?” Keeping my eyes fixed on her forehead, like I was solving a magic eye puzzle, I replied, “Kerrryyy?” almost like a question. 

Chuckling incredulously, she responded, “No it’s not—it’s Jessee.” Not knowing what else to say, I just repeated in a robotic monotone, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s Kerry.” 

Looking worried about her own sanity, she begged me, saying, “But wait—haven’t you been calling yourself Jessee? Didn’t you write down your name as Jessee?” 

I gave one final, noncommittal shrug, raised my eyebrows sadly at her boyfriend, like “What are you gonna do?” and gently closed the door. 

My wife, who had been listening in, was now on the floor, convulsing. She’s the rare type of Utahn who didn’t inherit the excessive niceness gene, and thus she had no problem laughing hard (even to the point of tears) at my expense. And now, years later, all she has to say to get me to shudder and wince involuntarily is, “Hey Jessee…”