I’m trying to learn to take a compliment. Don’t get me wrong, I am not getting an overabundance of compliments, but when I get them, I want to be gracious about it. I’m not sure why my first instinct, when someone says something nice to me, is to say “shut up, no I don’t.” Something is not right about that. Compliments can be awkward, or confusing, sometimes. This morning I walked in to the kitchen and one of the guys I work with said ‘you look tall today.’ Um, thanks? I don’t know what that means, and I don’t actually know if that is a compliment so I had this witty reply:

“Yeah. Shoes.”

Dorothy Parker’s got nothing on me. I do know that agreeing with someone is not usually the right way to go, like when someone tells me my hair looks good (only women do this) and I reply “I know, right?” Probably not ideal, but in my defense, I put some time into it. I am also not great at giving compliments, because as soon as I do, I immediately worry about having sounded sincere. My cynical nature, I guess.

The other one that throws me for a loop is when I go to get my eyebrows waxed, the girl always says “you have a great brow line.” Again, is thank you the appropriate response here? Because I had literally nothing to do with the construction of my brow line. So I feel like that is a compliment, but it is a compliment for my great great grandmother, who knew enough to have children with my great great grandfather based on the precision of his facial features, maybe? So, good job there. I don’t want to sound like an asshole and agree with her, but I don’t really want to start a fight about it either, so I go with something like “mmmm.” Genius.