Sometimes the most unlikely and unusual compliments, the ones that may have not really been meant to be compliments, are the best ones. Like once, I was flipping through incoming books at the library where I work & my supervisor and I were complaining about ourselves. We do this often. We are girls, and we are quiet girls who have found different versions of ourselves within this library. Libraries are little safe havens for cat loving, coffee-slurping dorks like myself. It’s a comforting thought, knowing that, if need be, I could move somewhere entirely different and find girls exactly like me I could get along famously with in a little part of town dedicated to books. Anyway, while we were bashing ourselves, ie:

“My hips are huge.”

“My nose is like an Indian chief’s.”

“I could keep things in my hair, like Marge Simpson.”

Then Keriann looked at me & said, “You know, I really like curly hair. It has so much more character than straight hair.”

And then for the rest of day, I’d remember that & feel good. If nothing else, I appreciate people who appreciate character, & having crazy curly hair is something I’ve come to like. Sure, boyfriends have gotten their hands stuck in it, and fake foliage tends to get tangled in it, causing interior decorating accidents, but I’m starting to like it.

This semester I took a lot of classes I guess I didn’t really need...I’ve been debating about whether to change my major & the task itself is a lot harder than it ought to be. For some reason, doing the paperwork to get into and/or stay in college and/or change things around is a lot harder than the actual courses are. Anyway, I decided to take some classes I thought would fit my schedule and sounded interesting, so I enrolled in a sociology class for Fall 2008. The teacher is really great- he’s older and he’ll digress, or say things completely inappropriate. Usually he’ll reference pop culture, like “Those sassy gals from Sex and the City. They link arms and frolic through the streets, don’t they? See, that’s a social norm that is different for men than it is for women. Which brings up another point, what’s that song now that on the radio? ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it’?” Oh, Pete, you are great. Anyway, after class these two girls and this guy that my teacher swears looks like Chad from the cell phone commercials are outside, usually smoking and talking. They’re always pretty nice to me & I always make sure to smile & say bye when I leave, especially to the Chad-like boy because he’s been really friendly, saying things like “Hi, buddy, how are you?” And I usually smile & say “Good, you?” before going off to meet someone for lunch. So today I stopped to talk about how great the class was & Chad-kid says “Oh cool, she’s staying to talk.”

The girl next to me says, “He really likes your voice.”

“Really? I always thought it was kind of childlike. When I leave messages on voicemails people always tell me I sound like a 5 year old.”

“Naw, I like it because it’s just really relaxing. Like if I have a bad day, I think if you just started talking I’d feel a lot better.”

“Yeah, it just sounds really sweet.”

And for some reason that just beat a lot of other compliments I’ve gotten in a while. Maybe because it was from someone I didn’t know all that well, or because it was completely unexpected and in an usual format, but all day I was so aware of my voice & I thought that it’s something I always have, which is a weird but oddly comforting thought. Also, compliments on how you look are always nice, but don’t mean as much to me as when someone says something nice about the way you act or what you’re capable of. It’s just that those comments are really about you, not the outer shell you project to people, but rather that hidden part of you that you think no one sees. So I guess that’s why it’s so nice to hear those little things, and writing them down is a way of remember them, because maybe one day when I feel like crap I can reread this & think “Ooo. I have a nice voice & hair full of character. The world makes sense again.”