Compliments are for the people who deserve them – other people

That was nice of you to say, but please respect my Midwestern inability to accept praise at this time

Photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash

No, no, no, no, I appreciate it, yeah, no, that’s nice of you to say, but it was all of us, really, a team effort. I didn’t do anything special. Anyone could have helped out in that situation. I just did what needed to be done.

Look. Here’s the thing, if we’re being honest. I’m mentally and physically incapable of accepting nice things people say about me. See. My body is recoiling in horror. I’m from Ohio. I just deflect it. Your kind words are lost on me. I literally don’t want to hear them, and if I hear them, I’m just going to put one hand on my hip and one hand on my forehead and fidget around uncomfortably until you stop saying nice things.

Really, I’d really rather no one ever think about me, and I’m sorry you had to interrupt whatever you were doing today to say something nice. It makes me feel bad. If we’re being real, I’m not comfortable with having feelings at all – bad ones or good ones. Feelings lead to emotions, which lead to other people noticing you, which leads to eye contact. I’d rather not go down that road.

I always feel guilty about being singled out. Maybe it’s the way we were raised – religious. You got all these guys and gals in the Bible who go through a lot of stuff worse than I ever did, and they don’t stand around waiting for everyone to say something nice like they’re so special. They get eaten by a whale or whatever and go to heaven. There’s no group chat where everyone is sending them a thumbs up and an attaboy.

That’s why whatever you say, I’ll say the opposite. “You’re a great cook!” “Hey, I’m just glad dinner didn’t kill eveyone.” “You look amazing!” “My wife buys my clothes - thank her.” “Your house is beautiful!” “It’s mostly just duct tape and spackle.” “You’re such a good parent.” “No one’s in jail, so we’ll take it as a win.” Or I’ll just change the subject.

Hey, how about those Cleveland Cavaliers!?!

The other part of it, I think, is you just do what you expect anyone would do – just do the right thing. That’s its own reward, right? Don’t brag about it. Be an example, sure, but let your actions do the talking. You didn’t get here all by yourself, so if someone says something nice, share the spotlight with someone who never gets the spotlight. That’s how I feel about it. There we go again with the feelings. I guess they’re good, sometimes.

But I get it. The look on your face — geez. If you find my humility off-putting, I’ll dial it back. You’re trying to be nice, and I shouldn’t reject an act of kindness — not these days, not in this world. I guess I am being selfish by making you feel out-of-place for expressing appreciation. I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Thank you for saying something nice about how I saved that family from a house fire while I was driving to work this morning.

But you also gotta hand it to the fire department because they did a heckuva job when they got there.

At a certain point, I was just in their way.

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