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Two questions for you, related to compliments.
Question One. How good are you at taking compliments? Are you gracious? Do you regard them as your right? Do you get embarrassed? Do you overdo the fake modesty?
Me—I get embarrassed, and then I worry that I’m overdoing the modesty and therefore making it seem fake.
Okay… question two. Of all the compliments you can remember receiving, what’s your favourite?
Mine is currently, “You have robust beard follicles.”
More about that in a moment. First, let’s consider some more common possibilities you may have encountered yourself.
Familial Similarity
I’m sure that “You look just like your mother” is always meant as a compliment, but if you’re a guy, some doubt might creep in. Was your mother masculine-looking? Are you feminine-looking?
What if your parents divorced acrimoniously and it’s your father saying it to you—is it still a compliment?
I was told as a teenager that I looked like my mum’s brother. Unfortunately, he’d died two years before I was born, so I didn’t know how to take it. Did I look like he did when he was my age? Did I look like him in his later years? Or did I look like he did at the time the compliment was given? I was quite a skinny kid, but I don’t think I could have been described as skeletal!
Have you and a sibling ever been told you’re “two peas in a pod” or “chalk and cheese”? Well-meaning, I’m sure, but in today’s hyper-sensitive society, is it good form to imply that someone’s small, round and green, or mouse-bait?
I guess that’s what comes of people using similes as metaphors. Easy mistake to make, but social media would declare you guilty of hate speech and you’d lose your job, family, reputation and sanity for it.
Natural
How about “Wow; you’re a natural!”? Most of us would take that as compliment, wouldn’t we?
But have you ever looked up the word “natural”? If you have, you’ll know this is can be an insult disguised as a compliment—I may or may not have used it myself that way in the past.
“What does ‘natural’ mean?” I don’t hear you ask. Here are a few definitions.
- Simple, mentally deficient, or whatever the current PC expression is (the OED says “learning disability”)
- Illegitimate, born out of wedlock, bastard, etc. (not that that’s a stigma these days in many/most circles).
- The biological child of your parents (i.e., not adopted)
- Not refined.
My advice: schwack the person calling you “a natural” upside the head with a stick of month-old celery and reply, “your mother…”.
Back to those follicles
I don’t receive that many compliments. Or, if I do, I either don’t notice them or don’t remember them**.
But I was emceeing a concert recently, and a gentleman with a very full beard looked at my freshly-cropped facial hair (my beard gets a number one all over every seven to ten days) and said words to the effect of, “You have great follicles.” The guy in question has an enviable presence and sense of humour, so I thought he was in his usual character, and waited for the punchline. But he followed it up by explaining that my beard line is well defined and that the hairs look strong, and summarized it with something like, “you have very robust beard follicles.”
That’s a keeper!
Honestly… with a skin texture that would have an orang-utang Googling “cosmetic surgeon”, eyes that would look ridiculously baggy on a bloodhound, a nose that would have given Carlo Collodi second thoughts when he came up with the idea of Pinocchio (and I don’t have to lie to be called “big nose”), and a knuckle-draggingly long-arms-and-short-legs-combo… to be told, “you have very robust beard follicles” is a compliment that I’ll treasure forever.
Or at least until someone pays me another compliment that I think is memory-worthy, at which time I’ll discard the “follicles” compliment. After all, remembering more than one compliment might go to my head and turn me into an egomaniac.
And that’s not a compliment.
**(Note to friends and family—if you want me to acknowledge and remember any compliment you feel compelled to give, please preface it with, “here’s a compliment Reg—don’t forget it!” And I hope you remember my request if I ever do something that prompts you to pay me a compliment!)
What’s your favourite compliment that you’ve received? Share by leaving a comment!