And you don’t want to mess with the Queen. This is a feel-good meme, and I am supposed to think of 10 compliments I have received throughout my life. This is actually a tough one for some reason, and I put it off and put it off because I could not think of a single, solitary compliment. I remember in second grade, we thought–don’t ask me why–that it was very cool to reject compliments and consider everything we did supremely not complimentable. I think I have retained that feeling. Anyway, here’s my attempt:
- At tonight’s race, the promoter had a crew of photographers there to put together the annual DVD of race highlights (last year’s was very cool), so of course I had to jump from the first lap so that I could get some camera time. I managed to get a good sized gap, and one guy jumped up with me, so we were doing a little rotating paceline, hammering hard. Then I dropped him and kept going for another two laps. All in all, I was away off the front for the first five laps. The pack of course caught me, and as they came by, one guy from another team, one of the strong guys who is always at the front with me, gave me a big grin, reached out and patted me on the back . It was a nice acknowledgment–non-verbal, but still a compliment.
- My first summer after I moved to NY for grad school I temped for a big advertising agency. One of the other temps was a psychology grad student at NYU, an African-American woman with an awesome voice (she has cut at least one R&B album). We hit it off pretty well, and spent a lot of time sort of goofing around and telling jokes, shooting rubber bands, and doing other typical office-boredom things. One day I got up to do something, and she said, “Damn! You’ve got a butt like a black man!” I thought this was the coolest thing I had ever heard and told some other friends. They were not sure what to make of it, but they finally decided (morons) that it was, in fact, a compliment.
- As an undergrad, I took a couple of creative writing classes. In one, we did an exercise where we were given an opening line and had to craft a story from that little seed. The line was “People get the darkest tan right around their armpits.” Weird, I know, but I came up with a story that the prof copied for the class. One girl in the class said, “I really liked it–it reminds of that story by Updike–the one in the grocery store.” Since I thought (and still do) that “A&P” was one of the best short stories of the 20th century, I was in heaven.
- Every year my college gives out a scholarship to one of our top English majors. The application process includes an interview, and one of the standard questions is to describe a class that challenged or changed them in some way. This past year, one of the scholarship committee members came up to me later and said that every applicant (there were three) named me as their most inspirational prof or one of my classes as one of the most influential. This sort of pissed off one of the other committee members, but that’s his problem.
- On August 20, 1996, a bunch of grad students decided to go into Manhattan to have some fun before classes started the next week. We knew where the new English grad students lived, and invited them to come along. Bill, a new grad who lived upstairs from me, was immediately smitten by another new grad. She was not interested, and paid me the supreme compliment of obviously preferring my company. By September 18, we were dating, and by August of 1998 we were married.
Okay, this is getting long, and I’m running low on ideas. I’ll have to come back to this later to finish the other half.
This is terribly sweet – I can feel your faint unwillingness to praise yourself in any way, and yet you’re a wonderful teacher, a powerful sportsman and you’ve got a cute backside. All things to be celebrated!
These are great (and now I know exactly how you and Dorr met). Here’s one you can include if you want when you get around to the next five: you’re one of the most imaginative people I’ve ever met and very, very funny. I’d say you’re a great writer, too, but you know, someone who’s already had a story of his compared to one of the best short stories of the 20th century doesn’t need to be told that.
Don’t forget the pepper you received on ratemyprofessor.com!
Okay, Emily, I’m blushing now… I’d forgotten about the pepper on RMP, LL! And by the way, how was SF?
I never considered thinking of compliments throughout my life– and I can’t think of any, not right off the top of my head anyway….is this a bad sign? I have never been one to take compliments, and most of the time, I just shrug them off…
Anyway, I enjoyed reading this, and I agree with Emily’s remarks, and I think what I said in my other post applies here, to your post: “words can’t do people justice.” But, another compliment to add is, maybe number 11 on your list: One of the best listeners 🙂
[…] Match-Girl of Memes Jump to Comments If Emily is the Queen o’ Memes, then her brother, Ian, must the Knight of Memes. He has just tagged me for Why I Blog, which I […]