![\"Kelvin's](\"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Follicles.jpg\")
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Two questions for you, related to compliments.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
Me\u2014I get embarrassed, and then I worry that I\u2019m overdoing the modesty and therefore making it seem fake.<\/p>\n
Okay\u2026 question two. Of all the compliments you can remember receiving, what\u2019s your favourite?<\/p>\n
Mine is currently, \u201cYou have robust beard follicles.\u201d<\/p>\n
More about that in a moment. First, let\u2019s consider some more common possibilities you may have encountered yourself.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure that \u201cYou look just like your mother\u201d is always meant as a compliment, but if you\u2019re a guy, some doubt might creep in. Was your mother masculine-looking? Are you feminine-looking?<\/p>\n
What if your parents divorced acrimoniously and it\u2019s your father saying it to you\u2014is it still a compliment?<\/p>\n
I was told as a teenager that I looked like my mum\u2019s brother. Unfortunately, he\u2019d died two years before I was born, so I didn\u2019t 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\u2019t think I could have been described as skeletal!<\/p>\n
Have you and a sibling ever been told you\u2019re \u201ctwo peas in a pod\u201d or \u201cchalk and cheese\u201d? Well-meaning, I\u2019m sure, but in today\u2019s hyper-sensitive society, is it good form to imply that someone\u2019s small, round and green, or mouse-bait?<\/p>\n
I guess that\u2019s what comes of people using similes as metaphors. Easy mistake to make, but social media would declare you guilty of hate speech and you\u2019d lose your job, family, reputation and sanity for it.<\/p>\n
How about \u201cWow; you\u2019re a natural!\u201d? Most of us would take that as compliment, wouldn\u2019t we?<\/p>\n
But have you ever looked up the word \u201cnatural\u201d? If you have, you\u2019ll know this is can be an insult disguised as a compliment\u2014I may or may not have used it myself that way in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does \u2018natural\u2019 mean?\u201d I don\u2019t hear you ask. Here are a few definitions.<\/p>\n
My advice: schwack the person calling you \u201ca natural\u201d upside the head with a stick of month-old celery and reply, \u201cyour mother\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t receive that many compliments. Or, if I do, I either don\u2019t notice them or don\u2019t remember them**.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cYou have great follicles.\u201d 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, \u201cyou have very robust beard follicles.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a keeper!<\/p>\n
Honestly\u2026 with a skin texture that would have an orang-utang Googling \u201ccosmetic surgeon\u201d, 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\u2019t have to lie to be called \u201cbig nose\u201d), and a knuckle-draggingly long-arms-and-short-legs-combo\u2026 to be told, \u201cyou have very robust beard follicles\u201d is a compliment that I\u2019ll treasure forever.<\/p>\n
Or at least until someone pays me another compliment that I think is memory-worthy, at which time I\u2019ll discard the \u201cfollicles\u201d compliment. After all, remembering more than one compliment might go to my head and turn me into an egomaniac.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s not a compliment.<\/p>\n
**(Note to friends and family\u2014if you want me to acknowledge and remember any compliment you feel compelled to give, please preface it with, \u201chere\u2019s a compliment Reg\u2014don\u2019t forget it!\u201d And I hope you remember my request if I ever do something that prompts you to pay me a compliment!)<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your favourite compliment that you\u2019ve received? Share by leaving a comment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2014I get embarrassed, and then I worry that I\u2019m overdoing the modesty and therefore making it seem fake. Okay\u2026 question two. Of all the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,490],"tags":[579,578],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fake","category-the-commentaries","tag-compliments","tag-follicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}