While at the supermarket last night, I had a complete stranger in front of me on line tell me I was “the sweetest man she’d ever seen in her life”.
What brought this on? Well, I was in line at 11:00 at night, buying nothing but grapes. When I placed them on the conveyer, she gave a bit of an odd look (who the hell goes out on a grape run at 11 at night?), but said nothing. As I waited, I was absently looking at the collection of impulse-buy magazines, when my eye was caught by Modern Pregnancy or Pregnancy Today or some such.
“Hmmm…”, I thought, “kittenlm may like to give this a read”. I grabbed a copy and tossed it with my purchase.
The woman in front of me looked at the odd food purchase, looked at the pregnancy magazine, put two and two together, and delivered her rather nice compliment.
I thanked her, but didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was the one who had a craving for grapes, not the pregnant wife.
Today the department secretaries stopped by to thank me profusely for the flowers. I have no idea who bought them. Is it Secretaries’ Day or something?
Not really the same thing, but: a few months ago, and old high school friend told me “I’m so glad you finally came out of the closet. Now you can bend at the waist.”
After a few moments of buh-whuh? I asked her to explain. “I mean that when you used to hug people, you seemed really stiff and uncomfortable. Now you lean into it.” Ah.
the summer after my freshman year of college, a good friend of mine had a July 4th party at his house, and his parents, being pretty cool folks (especially for church-goers), oversaw the festivities. of course, they didn’t have eyes everywhere, and there were lotsssssssss of illicit activities going on in addition to the en-masse underage drinking. I, for example, had been partaking of a particular nasal powder for quite some hours, when my good friend’s dad meanders over to me and proceeds to make idle chitchat. after a few minutes (or hours, hell, I don’t know) he pauses, looks at me and goes “you know, I think college has done you a lot of good… you just seem so much more lively.”
…god, I wish I could remember what I said to that, or how I managed not to collapse into a ball of frenzied laughter.
A few years ago, I had a student with MS in one of my classes. He was a jerk, so I didn’t cut him any slack with anything. “No, Craig, it’s due now. Not tomorrow.”
A year later I ran into his Dad at a gas station. He walked over to shake my hand, and thanked me for being the best teacher Craig ever had. “You treated him just like everyone else, and didn’t let him use his condition as an excuse.”
