As one of the news portals that were duty bound to cover the Talbot County Council election of 2018, it was hard for The Spy to put its finger on why things became so manifestly ugly at the end. For a community that has prided itself as having Quaker-like respect for listening to other points of view, there was a breakdown of those norms this fall in ways unimaginable in the recent past.

It is not within The Spy’s mission to determine the innocent and the guilty of this kind of thing. This happens in all towns, rich and poor, large and small. But its occurrence here is still considered at the Spy as a temporary departure from the Talbot County’s genuinely courtly DNA. This is not a permanent condition; things will be reset.

The “cause” of such things though is hard to answer. It is true that the Trump era has introduced an “in your face” approach to political dialogue, but how and when that gets trickled down to a community level like Talbot is hard to determine.

The Spy, however, has another theory and it involves fussiness.

Simply stated, Talbot County has more fussier people living here now. Some of the fastidious were born here, while a good number have moved here, but collectively they are surely growing in numbers.  This may be due to our ever-expanding retirement population; since it is a truism that the older one gets, the fussier one becomes; but to single out one group is a pure form of ageism.

Nor should fussiness be seen in negative terms.  The “fussy” count some of the world’s most successful people as part of their tribe. They have become accomplished in building businesses, leading governments, or other forms of enterprise because of that fussiness. They are by nature, according to Webster’s, “overparticular, fastidious, discriminating, selective, exacting, demanding, choosy, picky” in their fields of concentration. Without those traits, very few things would get done well in American life.

Nevertheless, this personality trait carries some baggage. When seen in a professional life, the use of fussiness can mean the difference between success and failure, or, in some cases, life and death; but in almost any other context, the characteristics of being “over-elaborate, over-decorated, ornate, fancy, overdone; busy” might be misunderstood as “stubborn, uncaring, arrogant, deaf, and mean-spirited.”  So when Talbot County’s fussiest, whether they be in public office or as concerned citizens, engage in such issues like zoning, development, noise reduction, comprehensive plans, or short-term rental policies it exposes them to significant criticism including being seen as very unkindly in a county that likes kindliness a lot.

The plight of the locally fussy is a sad one, since many, if not all, are known to the Spy as caring, generous, and passionately committed to improving and protecting Talbot County, even if that means offering their all too frank opinions on what are the correct decibels of noise in a particular neighborhood. The suggestion that special interests outweigh their instinctive (and typically uncontrollable) impulse to solve these problems on their own holds little weight.

Nothing is more frustrating or hurtful than being misunderstood but that is the price the fussy of Talbot County pay for this inclination. Quickly their “overparticular” approach to solving problems is quickly perceived as being off-putting, egotistical, and at times a bit threatening.  What seems to them as good common sense tend to be greeted with doubt, distrust, or even worse, as being seen as unkindly to those with different views.

The Spy is not the only one who suggests the fussy get a bum rap. Indeed, there is a classic handbook to help the fussy among us, entitled How to Do Things Right: The Reflections of a Fussy Man by L. Rust Hills more than forty years ago.

Self-aware enough to accept and embrace his own life as a fussy person, Hills, a highly respected fiction editor at Esquire for over 30 years, highlighted the challenges of being picky in the modern world.  He offers helpful suggestions on how to do things the right way in chapters which include “How to Refold a Road Map,” “How to Eat an Ice Cream Cone” and ways on “Mapping Out The Errand Routes,” but also useful guidelines for the fussy how to navigate such things like, “How to Avoid Family Arguments,” and “Training for Leisure.”

Perhaps the most helpful for the fussy in Talbot is Hills’ tips on how to appear more kind. Knowing that the perception of being unkind is a severe handicap in winning an argument, Hills provides some very basic strategies in his chapter, “How to be Kindly,” including tips like:

“The first step toward being kindly is to appear kindly. You should smile sweetly a lot, more or less all the time… Practice your sweet smile when you’re alone, in the bathroom mirror… practice saying soothing and reassuring things.”

“Everyone knows that the way you act sooner or later becomes the way you are. If you act kindly long enough, surely you’ll really become kindly…Besides even if you can’t actually manage to become kindly, people may sort of let down their guard and begin thinking of you that way.”

While Talbot County should be extremely grateful that we have so many fussy people here, this “hard to please” crowd must build a certain degree self-awareness so that their wonderful ideas on land protection, economic development, the rights of property owners, or noise abatement will be heard by more people if they are perceived as doing it in a kindly fashion.

Equally, for the less fussy of us, the next time a controversial local issue comes up, or better yet, a letter to the editor rubs one the wrong way, L. Rust Hills would advise taking a deep breath and think of the special burden the fussy must carry as they share with us how to do things right in the right way.

In short, our fussy fellow citizens and elected officials really do care and, with the right tools at hand, will undoubtedly be more effective in the future after brushing up on their  kindness skills.