The best compliment I’ve ever heard wasn’t delivered to me personally. A little background:
In college, I turned my back on organized religion and became an atheist. A person on my floor learned about this, and asked me to meet with him and a friend to talk about religion and such. So, I did, with a friend of my own in tow (a non-atheist) just so I wouldn’t get dog-piled. We talked about all sorts of things, never got hostile, but they didn’t change my mind about anything.
After I left, my friend stayed behind for a bit. They still didn’t understand how I could be an atheist, and asked my friend why I was like that. And what he told them was still the greatest compliment I’ve ever received: “Because he thinks.” My friend may not have agreed with me on everything, but he did understand that I had thought deeply about the beliefs I held, and he respected that. I really appreciated that.
When students come back years later and tell me I made a difference in their lives, it always touches me. But to tell the truth, the one compliment that sticks more than any other was delivered by an ex-girlfriend who was dating my room-mate. She and he had been quite noisily copulating upstairs while I read a book in the living room. This auditory stimulus had me quite erect, and was distracting from my reading. Hollea came tripping downstairs to head home, and stopped by my chair to chat for a bit. I laid the book in my lap and tried not to show my reaction. We exchanged pleasantries, and then as she left she leaned over, grabbed my unit, gave it a squeeze and said “Don’t worry. You’re still the best fuck in the state.” and headed out the door.
Sincere or not, that has been a pleasant memory to this day.
I went to the beach for the weekend with my best friend’s boyfriend. My best friend, Holly, couldn’t go at the last minute because of a far away funeral she felt she must attend. Later another mutual friend commented to Holly that she must really trust her boyfriend since she wasn’t worried about us going to the beach without her. Holly said she didn’t trust her boyfriend at all but she completely trusted me.
You guys know those peeing contests guys have… like my brothers when they were little, going in the backseat of the car “so I grenade your soldiers!” “then I bazooka yours!” “then I use an A bomb!” “then I! use! an H bomb!”
One day I was in an internet game with two friends (Mike and Paul) and a friend of theirs (John). It was a text-based game and somehow during a break they managed to sort’a forget I was there and started a peeing contest about who could come up with the most absurd strategy, including proposals that involved things which the computer-controlled enemies were most definitely not equipped for. After a while I say “so, do we go in or what?” and they all go “oh my God, Nava is here! uhm…”
Me: Oh, well, you know, I was thinking (insert here an idea even more absurd than the ones they’d bandied about)
John: I don’t know what you’re smoking but I want some, what’s it called?
Mike: nah man, Nava doesn’t do drugs.
John: that sounded like she’s pretty high. And anyway how do you know she doesn’t do drugs, you just know she says she doesn’t.
Mike: first, I know she doesn’t because nobody who’s on drugs has the kind of reflexes she has. And second, I know she’s got crazier ideas sober than all of us high and putting our heads together. She just doesn’t normally share them with strangers to avoid scaring them: count yourself privileged.
Paul: yup.
It’s a totally weird compliment but well, I never claimed to be normal, I just sometimes kind’a fake it.
My five year old son gives me lots of little compliments daily, which I love, but one that sticks out came from my great-nephew, Tyler.
It was 1990, and he was just about 3. I had spent the whole summer with him, playing and taking care of him. I was out of work for 3 months, and had a Nanny job in the fall that would take me 2000 miles away. He was so enamoured with me, that he would run and change his clothes to look like mine. Lucky for him I dressed mostly in jeans and t-shirts.
Anyway…I moved from Wisconsin to L.A. California to be a nanny that fall. I was so lonely for a few months. In one phone call a few weeks after my move, his mother told me that one night while out looking at the stars with the neighbors, the neighbor lady asked Tyler, “Who put those stars up there?”. I am sure she thought he would say God, or Jesus, or something like that. Tyler said, “My Aunt Cathy put them up there for me”!
Wow!!
He is almost 21 now, and I made him a card for H.S. graduation about that incident. His mother told me he had that card on his nightstand for weeks, and read it a lot. Another compliment.
The most improtant was from my son speaking at his college graduation.
“I want to just thank my Dad for believing in me. I would not be up here without his support”
Arthur Kane and Johnny Thunders:
" Hey man, that was great. You got the gig. We want you to stay on with us."
My former Boss (who is now our Regional Service Sales Rep). made copies of my filing system, and shows my paperwork around to our high-end ISO clients as an example of what we can do for them.
It’s netted two former clients who had went with one of our competitors a few years back.
In tech school, after completing a moderately difficult exersize and explaining it to his partner, one of the other airmen says “I feel like Redwing!”
At a lessons learned session a company or two ago: “What do you do if you can’t get hold of anyone?” “Call Redwing. If he doesn’t know, he knows who will, and they’ll answer his call”
“Your marriage is what we want our marriage to bed like.”
Said to me by a friend, two days before she got married. And they’ve just asked us to be godparents to their first baby. Another good one.
“You’re sort of literary compendium who walks.”
My best friend.
“If we ever disinherit you, we’re keeping your wife.” My father-in-law to my husband.
I was leading an archaeological survey crew through some absolutely tortuous terrain. Because of my own experiences as an entry-level grunt working for some seriously lazy-ass supervisors, I’ve always made it a point on every crew I’ve ever lead that I would never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. Anyways, on this particular job we had an older Native American monitor working with us who was (is) a retired Marine. We had gotten back to the truck at the end of the day and were shucking our boots and gear and he looked at me and said “You know, you would have made a good officer.”
Once when I was a teenager, I came home from shopping and modelled an outfit I had bought. My father said something to the effect of how I usually put something nice together when I select my clothes. It was huge because he had never complimented me before.
And recently I was visiting the parents and driving the rental car, and joking to him about how he probably wished he was driving. And he said something to the effect of my driving being fine. Again, wow.
And one guy I was housemates with told me I was very beautiful in the face. :eek: I took that to mean I was too fat, but still.
This thread is surprisingly interesting.I keep checking back to read people’s compliments. Perhaps I’m getting a little reflection of the glow, but regardless, good on you OP - good thread choice.
I’ve gotten the “I wish my relationship was like yours.” comment.
A friend in high school put my name in the yearbook questionnaire thing, under “People you most admire.” Me and Nicole Kidman. I’m 99.99% sure that’s the last time my name will ever be paired with Nicole Kidman’s. I’m not sure why she admired me so much, but I’m still proud of that.
Also, a professor once sent me an email when I was applying to grad school, telling me that based on my work and qualifications, I should be like Diana the mighty hunter striding boldly ahead, rather than a timid faun stepping on eggshells. That’s definitely my favourite weird compliment. (And yes, that professor always talked like that.)
M&M giving my surrodaughter my name as her middle name. Brought me to tears when they told me they were doing that.
My mother-in-law said “I don’t just love you, I really like you” last week. Very, very sweet.
My sister always tells me that I am such a good mom and she hopes she can raise her son the way I raise my daughter. The fact that she calls me all the time with questions about what she should do with her son or tells people “my sister does XY with her daughter so I’m going to try doing it that way” is such a huge compliment.
My mom was telling someone about how she’d seen me testify in court, and she said I had spoken calmly and clearly and didn’t leave anything out. That got to me, because it was an emotional time and I’d pretty much been going around feeling like a real fuckup.
A lady I worked with told me that I reminded her of the wood nymphs in a book she’d had as a child. She later gave me a copy of that book, with the same compliment inscribed on the flyleaf. A wood nymph! How excellent is that?
Another compliment.