NICE:  A HIGH COMPLIMENT

If you were in the service, you heard a lot of "Little Johnny" jokes, and you know that Little Johnny is not afraid to say just what he thinks (even tho it may be pretty salty.)  There's a Little Johnny joke that has Little Johnny going up to the blackboard to do an arithmetic problem:

   8

+ 5.

Johnny puts

   8

+ 5

 ____

  13

Teacher says "That's very good, Johnny!"

Johnny says "Good!!  Hell - that's PERFECT!"

Those of you who know me from lately know that I put my heart and soul into my cooking.  My only anticipated reward is a compliment.  (My savvy wife has been sure to compliment me highly to keep me cooking so that she doesn't have to.)  So, we got down here, and I started dishing out some of my specialties to selected Belizean friends.

They would taste it.  Then they would eat it, pretty quickly.  "That's nice!" they said.

"Nice..." I thought, "THAT WAS PERFECT."  "THAT WAS THE BEST ____ YOU EVER TASTED!!"

This happened again and again.  Eventually, we began to realize that words like "Wonderful", "Super", "Delicious", "Fantastic", or even "Great" - i.e. superlatives - just aren't in the Belizean vocabulary.  "Nice" is a very high compliment indeed.

(If they don't like it, they won't eat it.  If they're really polite, they will bag it up, and take it home and give it to the dogs!!")

Charlotte speculates that it may have something to do with Spanish, which actually only has a few superlative modifiers.  The Corona beer claim is "La Cerveza Mas Fina"   (More fine?  Would Tony the Tiger say that?)

Compare that with Regal Pale's claim to be "One of America's two great beers."

Oh well.  I've tasted Regal Pale and it's not nice.  Belikin is nice.

Sr. Ric 

Sr. Ric

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