I’ve been told by many people that I have a very distinctive walk. The best explanation I’ve gotten is that I “float” instead of walking, as if my head is completely stationary. But I’ve never noticed other people bobbing excessively when they walk, so I don’t quite understand how it’s unusual. Other people say I swagger everywhere I go, but I still haven’t figured out quite what that means.
Someone once told me that I naturally hold my head very high almost, but not quite, to the point of being haughty or stuck up. This makes me glad because when I see people walking around staring at the ground I want to grab their chin and yank it up.
Another friend told me that my natural sitting position resembles a gorilla. I thought that sounded insulting but apparently she meant I reminded her of the strong confident yet comfortable pose a gorilla tends to sit in. So I guess that’s a compliment.
I’ve also been told I exude silence, which just sounds cool whatever the hell it means.
It turns out that I am short. I always thought I was average. Children are short, you know? A lot of people described me as short, but I figured they weren’t paying close attention. Then one day I was talking to my mother, and she said I was short. My mother! The betrayal! But that was when I learned I was short.
Someone once told me that someone had told her “You could take a lesson from Annie. She knows how to take care of herself.”
I never thought in terms of “taking care of myself.” I just thought I did what had to be done.
A total stranger once stopped me on the street to say “I just want to say thank you. I’ve been overweight all my life and I see you walking every day. I thought to myself ‘She’s so skinny and I see her walking every day. If she can do it, so can I.’ I started walking every day and in three months I’ve lost forty pounds.”
I never thought walking every day was so unique and memorable.
Wow, that has got to be the nicest thing somebody could say to somebody else.
ETA - I forgot mine. After an episode of depression in college, I started seeing a counselor, and at my first visit she says somebody about me seeming anxious and high strung. I was all, the hell I am! I am cool and calm and collected and what is this high strung shit?! So I called up all my friends and asked, “Do you think I’m high strung?” and there were all these very uncomfortable silences. (Which I guess was its own answer - does a cool and calm person call you up and snap, “AM I HIGH STRUNG?! TELL ME!”)
I think it’s funny the OP doesn’t think he’s tall. My husband’s 6’6" (that’s 2m fer you furriners) and he definitely knows he’s tall. And he *hates *being reminded of it - the best way to ruin his day is for strangers to come up to him and start a conversation about his height. (He’s OK with getting it occasionally from family members, though.) I think it’s because it’s so obvious that he’s tall - can’t they find a better way to start a conversation?
He gets weirded out by other tall people. It’s pretty funny.
I once ran into someone I went to junior high with, and he told me that people back then thought I was crazy and were afraid of me. This still perplexes me because I remember myself as being a very reserved, laid-back, wise-cracking pothead and not in the least frightening.
I’ve been called ‘diplomatic’ by lots of people when I did some very public work but I don’t see myself that way. I see myself as biting my tongue a lot so that I don’t say most of the rude things that I’m thinking.
Someone once said to me “You’re excellent in a crisis, and incredibly gracious on top of it. There’s no one I’d rather have around than you when things get bad.”
I’d never have thought of it in those terms. I always just figured “Well, it’s gotta get done, it sucks for everyone, and being pissy about it just makes it worse.” Or, alternatively, in the face of much blustering, “Um, why don’t we fix it FIRST, and THEN worry about whose fault it was.”
Heh-heh, a similar story for me. Like Zsofia, I thought I was cool and all. Then, when I was in my 30s, I jumped on something my boss said. He leaned back, shook his head, and drawled (in his New Orleans accent), “CairoCarol, you take everything so damn seriously.”
Astonished silence on my end. Finally I croaked out, “I do?”
He did me a huge favor by telling me that, because afterward I began to monitor my responses to situations to see if he was right. He was, and it has been enormously helpful to have that insight.
I still take things very seriously - that trait is impossible to change - but now I have much more perspective. I can keep myself from showing the intensity of my responses, and I can remember that what seems like an appropriate reaction to me may very well appear to be going overboard to others.
This, only I’d use the word “kind,” since “nice” is so namby-pamby.
I’ve pretty much internalized this by now, but when I first started hearing it I was fairly WTF, because I can actually be judgmental as hell. Apparently I get points for not spewing my judgments unsolicited, though.
I’m good in a crisis and get straight down to business as long as it’s someone else’s crisis. When I had to gather my animals and flee one of the wildfires I came completely unglued when I couldn’t find one of the cats, and if my partner hadn’t been here I probably wouldn’t have left and would have tried to wait it out in the pool or something stupid like that. Whoever thinks that I’m calm. cool and collected is just wrong about me.
I don’t try to win at things, I try to not lose. This came up in the context of playing cards, but I’ve since realized it extends to almost everything in my life.
I’ve been told I have a “frightening” or “scary” memory. I really wish people would stop using negative terms to describe it, but people mean it in a complimentary way, as one would say: “Cecil? Cecil is smart. Scary-smart!”
It’s not a “photographic” memory or anything, but apparently, I have exceptional memory recall. I’ve always thought everyone else remembers stuff the same way.
I can totally see myself doing the same, and I suspect that we’re alike in that in a crisis, we tend to focus on making it easier for everyone else. When it’s our crisis, and we’re the only (or at least primary) ones affected, we’re allowed to freak out.
It’s probably a bit of both and it took my partner to convince me that the adult cats had a better chance of not getting lost if we left them at home since they spend most of their time outside anyway and wouldn’t take well to being crated for days. There was no way I was leaving without the 7 week old kittens though even when the flames were less than half a mile away. I did manage to remember important papers but most of what I tossed in the car was impractical and easy to replace, and while I ran around like a nut my partner calmly laid out hoses, set up sprinklers on the roof, set up a generator and charger pump by the well, and marked things clearly for the firefighters. Thankfully one of us keeps our head no matter what happens.
I am apparently “good at emergencies”. I’ve been told this a few times and I just figure that it’s because I’m a big picture person and in general emergencies require a lot more big picture thinking than detail thinking. The first time I was told this I was 15 and my at the time boyfriend had just got a hay elevator crank to the mouth. His boss called me to ask me what he should do. I told him to put the teeth in a cup of milk and get the BF to the ER. Seemed so simple to me but apparently that was beyond the grasp of this guy. This summer I was working at our local fair when a 70mph straight line wind came through. As soon as I heard about it coming our way myself and my boss cleared the tents and started moving people to brick buildings. The tents we cleared ended up coming down and could have killed people easily. The fair park director later told us that he wouldn’t have ever thought about tents this size (80x120!) coming down and thanked us for what we did. So either I can keep a clearer head than most or I am surrounded by bumbling idiots. I kind of think it’s the later.
