I thought of another one. I took wood shop in high school, and the shop teacher had never given a girl an A for the class. He gave one to me, though. He told me that I was the first girl in the class who never asked any boy to help her with her projects, that I always carried my own lumber, and that I was always willing to do my share of the cleanup. Plus, of course, the quality of my work deserved an A. I got the A on the quality of my work AND my attitude.
Once, a friend of mine who I really admire described me as being “a live wire.” I really appreciated it and still sometimes remember it, hoping it means something good.
When I was in high school I took voice lessons from a woman who taught college girls. One day she had me sing in front of them to “see how it’s done.” (???) She even had them look into my mouth at my tongue placement and how open my throat was (she said.) (Double ??? But if made me feel good.)
Reminiscent of grammar school when near the end of the hour the music teacher would sometimes say “Becky, come up here and sing.” And when I was a toddler and Granmaw would plant me on top of an overturned washtub and demand “Sing!”
One I want to give is to a lady who works in one of the stores we frequent. She cashiers, stocks shelves, and keeps the store flowing. I told my husband "She could direct traffic on the Titanic—and all the boats would have been full!
At one job I had, the owner finally made me a manager. He prefaced it with “I always swore I’d never have a female manager, but…”
Maybe that’s why I like the Titanic lady.
And kayacker you made ME tear up and I’m gonna punch you in the face. 
I don’t know if its the most meaningful but its one that has stuck in my mind.
A few years ago I was having lunch with others at work, the topic turned to another colleague who the others proceeded to tear apart in her absence, very spiteful, mocking and hurtful comments. One person said, “Its not as if anyone likes her”
I spoke up, “Actually I like her”, sudden and utter silence around the table, a few awkward looks and then the conversation moved on to something else. I didn’t think anymore about it, as far as I was concerned it was just the truth, I did like her and had never understood the others hate for her.
Some time after lunch finished I was taken to the side by one of the contributors (who had been one of the most hateful of the participants), who told me, “DH, about what you said earlier, I thought it was admirable, I might be wrong about her, but I was right about you, I always knew you were one of the good guys”, gave me a warm and genuine smile and walked away.
The outcast girl started to be treated better afterwards, I don’t know if my defending her helped, but I like to think that it did.
“You remind me of your Dad”
I know it must be because I look like him, or sound like him, because I have far too many character flaws to be compared to him in any other way. But it made me feel good.
On my annual review at work, one colleague wrote, “Lisa is blind to (internal corporate rankings). She treats everyone with equal respect and kindness, from the President to the lady who cleans the bathroom.”
When my son was 21 he went on a trip with the younger kids and me. He immediately started talking about being a vegetarian and assured me that if I just watched “Meet Your Meat”, the PETA video, I’d instantly become a vegetarian too. I explained that while I have no issues with vegetarianism, before I make a such a major lifestyle change, I would want more input than an admittedly-biased video–I would do some scientific research, look into various philosophies, etc, and then decide. “Instantly” making a decision like that didn’t seem like the best way to do it.
He was thoughtful for a long time, then he said, “Mom? You really THINK about things, don’t you? I mean, like, you really think about all the angles and stuff and have good reasons for what you do. That’s…cool.”
It meant a lot, and I notice him trying to think things through before making choices now.
“You help ground me”
Said out of the blue from a very dear friend, that sometimes needs a firmer grasp of facts and realities and cause and effect. Very meaningful to me as we’ve been close friends for 25 years and she is a very successful person.
Years ago, my then GF and I were waiting in line at the movies. In front of me was a mother holding her 3(ish) baby girl.
For some reason, this girl started stretching her arms out at me begging to let me hold her. The mother finding this all very amusing agreed to let me hold her. At this point the baby’s face turned red as a Washington apple.
I’ll never forget that day, as I was going through a particular rough patch in my life and was not a happy camper to say the least. That little strange girl who I don’t even know her name, made me feel better about my lot in life.
An older guy was a mentor/teacher to me in a certain field. Fast forward some years and i compliment him on the fine job he did on a certain project. He said “Really? I was thinking while I did it how I wish I had NCB here to do it, since you always did it better than me.”
Unrelated to above
My wife: “You make me feel good!” About how I make her feel loved. And sometimes she says that about the sex.
Learning Swedish in high school, the other kids in the class said I spoke it with a weird “Russian” accent (I had already had a year of Russian). The teacher, who was an older Swedish woman, said “It’s not a Russian accent, it’s Finnish.” I was immensely pleased that at least it wasn’t American.
When I was a tour guide for the Minnesota Historical Society back in the '80s, I did a lot of translating for German tourists. They would invariably ask me how long I had lived in Germany. When I told them I had yet to visit the country, they would react in disbelief: “We can tell you’re not German, but we would never, ever guess that you’re American!” What a lovely, warm feeling this gave me.
After spending a year studying in Moscow ('89–'90), Soviet citizens would ask me “Are you from Bulgaria?” or “What part of the Baltics are you from?” Again, they would never guess my true nationality. After all the work I did toward my MA in Russian, this was extremely gratifying.
My undergrad English lit teacher kept returning my paper to me and asking me to redo it, a book report on "The Rise and Fall of Silas Lapham. Each paper I turned in, he hated. I tried everything: extra research, asking to see my classmate’s papers, going to other professors for help, etc. Finally, I gave up on the 6th draft and turned in a 1.5 page paper (I usually turned in 3+). He handed it back to me the next day and said, “This belongs in graduate school, not MY class!”
That last one reminded me of a couple…
In high school (1965) I wrote a paper on C.S. Lewis, and from time to time my English teacher would ask to borrow it. She liked it so much, she just wanted to re-read it for pleasure.
I was an Air Force brat and went to several different grade schools. About ten years ago, through the magic of the interwebs, I decided to look up a teacher I had in the seventh grade (around 1960), who had been a mentor. I found him near Boston (right where I left him) and out of the blue wrote him a letter thanking him for the things he taught me that are still part of my life. We started a little school newspaper that year (I do newsletters for clients to this day). He kept a big box of interesting photos and pictures cut out from magazines, and every Monday he had us pick one and write a short story about it, during class time, going off in any direction we wanted. It was a great exercise in creativity and working against a deadline. (As a grant proposal writer, deadlines are my life today.) We also did things like take our list of spelling words and use all of them in a short essay or story, taking about half an hour for the exercise.
Imagine my surprise when about a week later my phone rang and it was this teacher. Now long retired, he thanked me profusely for the letter and said he showed it to all of his children (he had eight, all grown, but still close) and even framed it. We chatted for a bit, and it turned out that back then, with all those kids, he was barely making ends meet on his teacher’s pay, and actually parked cars in the evening to make extra money.
But the thing he said in that conversation that stuck with me was, “You always were a good writer.” Holy cow, the man knew me when I was 12, and here I was calling him almost 45 years later and he remembered that? It was sweet to hear.
In 8th grade, I hated the first two quarters of English, which focused solely on grammar. I didn’t understand it, and no one was able to explain it to me. The teacher thought I was a complete idiot (IIRC, my grade for the end of the second quarter was D+, the lowest I ever got).
In the third quarter, we switched to creative writing. One of the first assignments was to write a paragraph about a picture we liked. At the time, I had a number of books at home on great artists, and I chose a painting by Winslow Homer that I was particularly fond of.
(This one: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/WinslowHomer-Eight_Bells_1886.jpg)
I turned in my work, and then got sick and missed the next week of school. When I came back, I wondered aloud what grade I got on my writing. My best friend looked at me and said “Didn’t you know? Mrs Earl read your paragraph to the class. In fact, yours was the only paragraph she read; she said all of the others were garbage!”
An indirect compliment, perhaps, but one I remember to this day.
(And I *still *didn’t understand grammar until I started learning foreign languages; today, I’m a certified EFL teacher.)
Wonderful story! I also love Winslow Homer and that painting in particular.
Don’t know if it’s the most meaningful (I kinda have trouble remembering compliments, honestly) but a recent one that made me feel really good:
I went to a gaming convention recently, and spent most of my time going to writers’ seminars. One of them was a “read and critique” thing where you read your work for 5 minutes and the editors gave you honest feedback. When I came in one of the editors, who I’d worked with recently for a short story in an anthology, said, “What are you doing here? You don’t need to be here.” But I stayed, and was one of the last ones to read my piece. One of the other editors gave a lot of great feedback to most of the other readers, mostly with suggestions for how they could improve their work. When I read mine, her first response was, “You don’t need to be here.”
Sometimes I get a little insecure about my writing, so that compliment pretty much made me feel good for the rest of the weekend.
Grr, it’s erased now, but i used to do heatsink troubleshooting at the amd forums. I guess im somewhat famous for figuring out the overheating issue on asus motherboards. In that thread, one compliment i got was “thank you thank you thank you!!! Amd are idiots and they should hire this guy right away!”
I was at work and I did something really simple to help someone. Another coworker said in disbelief, “I don’t know why you don’t have a million friends!” As someone who is something of a friendly loner, this really made my day.
I think the best compliment that I gave as opposed to received was at my oldest son’s wedding reception. When asked to speak, I talked about marriage very briefly, and then turned to my new daughter-in-law, and said “You bring intelligence, beauty and grace to our family. Welcome!” It was well received.
My best personal compliment received was when my younger son once told me that he was very lucky to have had me for a Dad.
My best professional compliment…I filled a Lt Col position as a new Captain in the Air Force. The AF trusted me with enormous responsibilities when I was a young man in my mid twenties. I tried to live up to that trust.
I was told that I was the most genuine person they’d ever met.
The day I got married, I was at the beauty parlor getting my hair and make up done. My mother was not with me as she was attending to the last minute details (that she could have delegated), and had spent and would spend zero time with me before the ceremony, still bitter who me? Any hoo, As I was getting ready to leave, I had my veil in place, but was still in a button up shirt and jeans, I heard a little boy say to his mother, “Oooh look, a princess!” I admit, I almost cried off all my freshly done make up. I have always had self esteem issues, and he totally made my day!