"FANCY YOUR KNOWING UNCLE HENRY!"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 118, 26 September 1941, Page 8

"FANCY YOUR KNOWING

UNCLE HENRY!"

Written for "The Listener"

by

K.

S.

NCE I have met someone I really () like, I find it is always best to get on to a Christian name basis right away. If I let it go until next time, a precedent has been established of saying " Mr. McGillicuddy," and it’s the hardest thing in the world to change it and start saying "Mac" without embarrassment. If the newcémer into my life is at all a decent sort of chap, and one that I am going to see a lot of, either through business necessity, or because I like him, there and then, without delay, I ask him his Christian name and say: " Righto, T’ll call you Malcolm and you call me Bill." If I tell him my name at the same time he feels he is being taken into my confidence, and no matter who he is, that man will respond. Sometimes, but very rarely, it is embarrassing, but not half as awkward as going on with the "Mr." business for weeks, both of you knowing quite well that the pretence ought to be dropped, but neither having the courage to suggest it openly. There is some sort of law involved here. Webb Miller mentioned it in his fascinating biography I Found No Peace. The law is this: if you show pedple you like them, they will like you. He proved it. All A Little Lonely The raw fact is that practically everyone in the world is a little lonely, and warms to a little kindness. We in New

Zealand are lucky to live in a community free from many of the encrusted inhibitions of the Old World, and can show kindly interest in strangers without being thought forward. Until the blitz blasted people into one another’s laps, it was possible (as many New Zealanders like you found out) to live in London for 20 years and hardly speak to a soul. Now I’m not really a very bumptious person, as’ you might have imagined from this. I live quietly in an average suburb, go to work, to church, to sport, and to the same pictures as everyone else. I’m quite the average sort that you pass in the streets every day, but the fact that I can " get away with" calling anybody by his Christian name is the illuminating point The easy acceptance by everybody of my familiarity is the outward sign of our classlessness. About 95 per cent. of the folk in this Dominion are descended from the same _ stock, educated in the same schools, subjected to the same social influences in press, sport, religion, entertainment, and then inter-married and mixed up with travel and change of residence. (The other 5 per cent. are either the very rich or the down-and-outs,) This’ country is. cut off from ready contact with neighbouring countries by, at the nearest, one thousand miles of ocean, and in most things, by many thousands more miles. Comparatively few newcomers arrive and very few leave.

_-- ri So we grow up exactly like a large edition of Pitcairn Islanders, where everyone is related to everyone else. The people of Whangarei and Hastings and Wanganui and Timaru and Greymouth and Invercargill are all related in some way or other, and probably went there from Auckland or Dunedin in the first place. Only our innate shyness prevents us openly calling everyone we meet Brother James or Cousin Mary, but once somebody else says it, then we are not suprised but just follow suit. Once you grasp these two facts-first, that everybody is a little lonely and when you show that you like him he is ready to like you, and, second, that the fellow just arrived from Hamilton or Oamaru is identically the same as you in background, and probably a distant cousin anyway, then, right away, you get on with him as a pal. Five minutes will produce a next-door neighbour who went to the same school, or "Fancy your knowing old Uncle Henry," and in ten minutes of casual questioning you will be staggered at ghe bonds of common interest that will be uncovered, and by that time to call him "Malcolm" is only the meanest courtesy. The only difference between you and me is that I started on the Malcolm and Bill business a little earlier.