What's the weirdest compliment you've ever received?
...ideally one that was both genuine and that you had the confidence and self awareness to interpret as kind. And for bonus points, what's one you've given?
I'm thinking back to the guy in group therapy years ago who told me he always thought of people who swore as not knowing any better words, but that I obviously knew better words and just also swore and even used them artistically and that's just really stuck with me. Sometimes I wonder how much of my self esteem has suffered not just because I've been told not to brag, but also because I'm extremely weird so the compliments I do receive often reflect that.
My bonus one (and I'm not sure how well he was able to take it) was that one of my fellow psych nurses was frequently and obviously terrified any time shit hit the fan, but that somehow still he'd never once failed to have my back. He'd be stuttering the whole way through an incident but I'd walk out of the med room with both halves of a B52 and he'd take one of the syringes without a second thought. He was literally the epitome of "courage isn't not being scared, it's being willing to face it." I should find a nice presentation of that quote somewhere to send him because I'm not sure I phrased it well at the time.
I was in my early 20s and was visiting a friend’s house. His wife had a friend visiting that I’d never met. We were introduced and the first words she said to me were “Do you know your features are wasted on a guy?” and then went on to provide specific details.
We were married a year later. And that was 30 years ago.
Especially eyelashes. It's bizarre to me that eyelashes are considered feminine when increased eyelash thickness / length is practically a male secondary sex characteristic (turns out testosterone doesn't magically skip your eyelashes). I've always wanted write a historical fiction femdom porn where the men dress like birds of paradise just for the principle of the thing; in nature males are more often the "fairer" sex, lol.
A neighbor saw me walking barefoot to my mailbox and complimented me on my healthy feet.
Hackles went up thinking he was some foot fetishist who was going to get weird on me. Nope, just a medical person of some sort that works with feet a lot and I genuinely have healthy arches and mobile toes. At least I choose to believe that explanation he gave. Otherwise, I have to assume my neighbor is jerking it every time I walk outside.
I have to check people's feet on admission, 50-50 to make sure there's no contraband in their socks, but also genuinely to make sure there's no gangrene or anything considering how many homeless diabetics come through. I've seen some feet alright. Nurses also frequently make "olive garden parmesan" jokes about the amount of skin flakes that come off (particularly older) people's feet when you go to take their socks off. It's so bad sometimes that you have to be careful not to breathe in or leave your mouth open when you do it because of how they disperse up into the air, except it can still get in your eyes, and you're rarely expecting it.
I got my leg fucked up in a hot sandy land far away. While I was doing rehab I used a cane and walked with a limp. One day I was walking out of an HEB in Houston when a dude dressed like Huggy Bear told me he liked my strut and then told me to "keep on pimpen playa."
In retrospect, it sort of makes sense as my limp with the cane looked like I was doing that stereotypical pimp walk but at the time I was very confused lol
Honestly all of my patients walking when they previously weren't is a pimp walk to me so. Usually the ones I see are catatonia though, not ortho. I still vibe deeply with this video.
I was told I looked like a cop several times back when I associated with less desirable parts of society. I think the reason they felt that way is because I showered daily, combed my hair, and had an acceptable level of personal hygiene.
A decade ago, I was walking a few blocks to get a burger, passed by a bar with an outdoor section.
A fairly sloshed guy stared me up and down, looked at his female friend, back at me and asked "Hey, are you trisexual?"
Being extremely awkward, significantly autistic, and apparently sufficiently twink, I responded "...sure?"
Guy got up and kissed me on the cheek.
I told him to have a nice night and went to get my burger.
...
So... yeah. That was the night I discovered what a 'twink' is, that I am apparently a twink, and explains all the times I've been catcalled by other dudes.
A shame that I am (basically) straight and only seem to date women who cheat on me or have immense mental health problems.
I had to have an abdominal ultrasound done once and the tech told me I have a great pancreas, "the most beautiful she's ever seen". I didn't know what to say but it made me happy.
The Miss "my state" came to sing the national anthem for a big sports event at my job. I took care of the sound for her and we chatted a little bit. She was constantly barraged by guys coming up and wanting a picture with her, so we didn't get to have too much of a conversation. She sang the anthem, and was moving on to her next engagement and I said glad to meet you and was about to go back to the rest of my job. She stopped me and said " but we didn't get a picture together!" I told her it was ok, I understand that it's part of her job. She insisted and handed HER phone to someone walking by and insisted they take a picture of us. After they returned her phone she looked me in the eye and asked for my phone number so she could send it to me. I have a wonderful girlfriend and I would never cheat on her, but miss "my state" asked ME for my number, and I have been walking on air ever since.
After some research, this redditor sums the moment up thus: "Dennis is incapable of complimenting him he doesnt have anything nice to say he doesnt respect Mac he doesnt even like Mac Mac just likes him and this is the foundation of their friendship no one likes Dennis everyone knows hes a scumbag psychopath but Mac admires and worships Dennis and values his opinions over anyone else which is how Dennis thinks everyone should see him he tolerates Mac because he keeps him anchored and from going to far or drowning while still validating Dennis's chaos and faults so he simply states the first thing he notices about Mac in the moment which is that his hair looks small which it does because he greased it different (obviously making an effort to be noticed by Dennis) When Mac realizes hes just saying what he wants to hear and not being genuine he goes to walk away which is why Dennis does the speach to let him know that he is important not because hes badass or how he looks but because hes always has Dennis's back"
I still don't understand how this could apply to this person's situation.
An ex from a meaningful, but fraught relationship tried to seduce me a few months after we had broken up. In the interim, I had started dating someone new, and I rejected the advances.
My ex was angry and lashing out. She said a few random insults about my new partner (implying she had manipulated me with sex), before finally saying “well, I hope she enjoys your magical penis!” (It’s not magical. The tiny wizard hat is purely for decoration.)
It can go the other way. Long before we got married, my wife hooked up with a guy to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Whatever. But years later she had a medical emergency and needed a ride to the hospital. One of the EMTs I think, or maybe a nurse idk, happened to be the guy. She was all kinds of fucked up on whatever they gave her and she's like, "I remember you. You have a small penis. So small and cute!"
I will never forget being at a party in my twenties and overhearing a girl I had hooked up with telling two other girls about my dick. It's a shame I didn't have the confidence then that I have now.
A friend of mine said I had a very good hugging-body. I always pictured huggable dudes as big, but I was really lean back then. She said it was because my lanky body somehow automatically fit the shape of her hugs.
When I was in undergrad, a new friend in my program asked if he could inspect my elbow. I said sure, and he probed my elbow with his fingers thoroughly for a couple of minutes. He then told me it was very well structured.
I believe you because while I am not literally your girlfriend, I am, metaphorically speaking, that girlfriend. I'm also childfree and maybe a dude so I wouldn't say ovaries but I would definitely describe my clitoral erection and natural lubrication in exquisite detail.
Had to Google him. My impression from Google images is that he's a very real kind of attractive. Not that weird Hollywood looksmaxing photoshop on top of plastic surgery thing.
Coworker told me I look like Linus Torvalds. I really don't, not even a little (other than being a white guy with glasses). But it was oddly flattering.
I knew who he was but had to look up what he looks like. Not bad tbh but I'm a whatever the hypersexual version of demisexual is, like where somebody is just vaguely cool and I'm like "mmmmmyes."
Wait, so if I have that same thing as a cishet guy, does it mean I have mommy issues? Or... female focused daddy issues? I always knew my sexuality was needlessly complicated
A couple years agoI (at the time mid 30s male) was coming back from a movie with my GF at about 11pm waiting for a bus in the UK. Two moderately drunk guys (looked to be about 10 years younger?) were waking down the same sidewalk, and about 2 steps after they passed us, one of them turns around and goes "Mate...", me and my GF look over and he's looking me up and down, "... NICE ass!" then fist bumps me and keeps walking.
My dentist (who is also my friend) told me I have great saliva. Fortunately it was while I was getting my cleaning…not in random hang out conversation.
I stick with pretty neutral compliments towards others but probably in my own profession I’ve expressed over the top enthusiasm for remarkably good handwriting or very organized/complete records. I’ve gotten a couple of laughs out of clients because it’s semi-rare and it’s kinda odd to get excited about those things.
I feel like weird compliments are almost in my job description. I've complimented people for everything from a large, solid bowel movement to my depressed patient doing their laundry or a previously catatonic one playing cards. And a lot of complimenting people's sleep habits, especially if they were manic as fresh hell the previous week.
I'm pretty sure it was intended as a compliment, but a little after I came out as trans I had a coworker tell me about a conversation she had with another coworker where she said about me, "They always dress better than us."
That's just the fear of not passing, lol. ...or the contrast between that and the weird greasy egg look people get if the dysphoria impairs their self care. It was a really bizarre realization for me that the reason I liked dressing hyperfeminine on rare occasions was essentially the same as men who do drag as a costume. I got my tits chopped off and have no regrets but I am considering getting a pair just to wear on special occasions.
When we started dating my partner told me I look like Jeff Goldblum (I am a female). He then bought us a Jeff Goldblum curtain for the bathroom and a portrait we put on the wall, as well as several records, keychains and cushions with Jeff (including that Jurassic park one). It's weird as fuck but Jeff's a handsome guy and a cool fucking person so I'm not too worried about it.
"Courage means being scared but doing it anyway" seems like a pretty succinct way of putting it I think.
My wierd compliment (if it can be called that) was when I was in high school English class. My teacher noticed how competent I was and how I was the only one to consistently raise my hand when he asked a question. He gave us a research paper to do and I got an F on it, exclusively because I fucked up the citations. He said the content was good, but he had to mark me way down due to improper citing. He said "I know you can do better than this."
Is that a complement? Either way, I think about that interaction and scenario a lot even though I haven't been in high school for well over a decade.
I feel like people mostly told me I could do better when I was begging for help, so I don't know that I'm the right person to ask.
And idk I was thinking more like a cool movie scene or something to really pack in the "oomph," but maybe. I definitely want to put a little more thought into it, the lack of thought being how I fucked it up last time.
I was once walking past a gay bar with a buddy of mine. A drunk guy stumbled out, looked us both up and down and yelled "Phwoar! That's a porno I wanna watch!".
I've been complimented on my voice before, and those aren't weird compliments. But delivery is important. I had a coworker tell me, "Your voice is great!" And of course I'm thankful. But then deadpan, she goes, "You should do ASMR so I can listen to it."
If you're male you could actually probably make a looot of money doing bdsm asmr audio porn. Get an OF and just do a few themed ones as samples / grab-n-go purchases, then offer custom scripts; I bet you'd make bank. Maybe spend about $20 for a couple different women with OF to tell you how they actually masturbate (would help to tell them your use-case so they know you actually want the actual dirty deets) then record yourself ASMR style instructing a woman to do those things. Offer to replace "babygirl" or whatever pet name you decide on with women's names for $20-50. Easy $$$.
ASMR people are a different breed. I'm married to one. The videos feel intensely intimate, but she'll just listen to them on the couch like it's the radio.
Meanwhile I get self conscious if someone walks by while I'm watching a video game cutscene lol
"You have perfect teeth." I don't, which is why I find it weird. One is cracked and another is chipped. Two separate women 2 years apart have told me that several times.
Several men have told me I have a great smile. I'm a cis-straight man. One of them was a martial arts instructor that looked like the Rock. He told me this in front of my girlfriend and the whole class. He then pointed it out a few times throughout the weekend-long workshop.
One guy that I had never met came up to me and told me I was a good dancer. He was with his girl.
I think people want to share their feelings about your dogs because they reasonably think you feel the same and you'll be glad to meet someone who shares your affection. So just give them a glimpse into your love for your dogs if you feel like it. Maybe they'd like to get friendly with your dogs and this is their opener. Also, you've probably chosen your dogs, the choise reflects some little aspect of your personality. You can be proud of it, so you can be complimented on it.
It was the middle of summer and I was jogging the last leg of a 20km lake circuit with my shirt off, sweating like crazy, and a guy drove past, leaned out the window, and yelled "My wife likes what she sees!"
Not especially weird compliment just weird that it came from the husband.
I know there have to have been even weirder ones I got over the years, but what stuck with me is when a nurse in a psych ward psychiatric clinic called me (a patient) being like a "weird, confused professor" as a genuine compliment.
Funny story I actually am a psych nurse and "manic professor" isn't the most dobbed on the bingo card but its definitely a classic and waaay better than the more common "neo-nazi wife-beater pretending they're depressed to try and duck their charges."
My better example was the dude that remembered all the weird and vaguely menacing sexual shit he said to me while manic and was mortified and I was like,"dude I worked with actual psychotic rapists for like two years, you ain't shit by comparison, trust me" and he was like "oh thank God" but the patient who only heard that last half of my sentence was like "What. The. Fuck." And it wasn't like I could explain it without illicitly putting the dude on blast.
Honestly I actually believe he was sorry (most who apologize for the weird sex shit aren't) for the exact same reason I wasn't worried about it when he was doing it; he really just hit me as young, dumb, and scared and trying to act bigger than he was. Idk I've just got a good feel for that kind of thing and even when he was doing it I was just like "...nice try kid. You are gonna take a nap now tho." He was actually really relieved for me to be like "no I've met actual horrible people you're not even close LOL"
Oh, I just realised (English not being my first language), I meant "just" a psychiatric clinic, not a criminal psych ward, I guess that's the confusion part showing on my end, lol.
Thankfully, no manic phases for me, but I met several people over the course of my life that had them (one woman I had a short relationship with used to tell me about the stuff she ended up doing during manic phases in her past, oh boy, it can get both scary and funny, but always interesting). I can fully believe and understand that he would have been genuinely sorry in that moment and appreciative and glad to have heard that from you. Another patient only hearing half of it makes it quite funny, I wonder what he thought in his head about the context with seeing the other guy go "oh thank god".
One particular winter I frequently wore a long coat and had longer wavy-ish hair. Two different people (separate occasions) said that I looked like Sam Kinison, each time with a disclaimer that I looked better than he did.
Oh some people have some absolute upside-down shelves on their legs. (Dunno about you but) especially fat people. A lot of people don't realize how much muscle is under there unless they're big enough to profoundly affect their mobility and that doesn't usually start happening until around like 350+. There's a reason Olympic weightlifters don't look shredded (except them calves). Shredded muscle, especially abs, is almost all for show.
I've only ever experienced Slater in Broken Arrow and Archer. Both were good fun. One was decidedly better than the other.
I don't know enough about the man to offer any in depth analysis, but he seems like a very confident person and apparently that's attractive. Sounds like a good compliment to me!
At a gas station, go in to grab some of my favorite brand of chewing gum (Original flavor Trident), and the clerk said "You look like you should be famous." I thanked him, and agreed.
At the grocery store, a cashier woman told me I look like Justin Timberlake. I've gotten that one a few times, and I take it as a compliment.
and one last one, I was on vacation with my girlfriend at the time, and we found this bar in South Carolina that had a big dancefloor, a great DJ, and almost nobody dancing. I love dancing, so I went out and started grooving to the music, just slipping between random dance moves, having fun because there was like nobody there to judge me. After dancing for a while, I'm about to go back to my waiting GF, when a pair stop me, a guy and gal. They said I was a great dancer, and asked what dancing school I attended? I told them I've never gone to a dancing school, I just do what feels natural.
I was told "No, you're intimidating". I forget exactly how it became the topic. It was an ex who said it and it was supposed to be a compliment in context. I still don't understand it especially compared to the friend whom I was with.
I am not tall, not heavy, not particularly muscular (especially at that time) and have soft features. My friend is a head taller, twice my size, built heftier/stockier and had sharper features. He is a big ol hairy Aussie. Awesome guy, no idea how I'd be more intimidating than him though
Honestly I've noticed a lot of it is confidence and mannerism. My partner has a friend who's over 6ft and 250lb who got stabbed and mugged within a month of living in our city. I'm a little under six foot, 120lb, and I'm an acute psych nurse specializing in the management of high violence risk patients, and I'm friends with at least a few of the homeless dudes (they make great drinking buddies, they know all the best area gossip).
While most of what I do is just not taking stupid chances, a significant portion over it is just "swagger" and being willing to take charge of a situation and get something done when it needs to be. I suspect it was a compliment because you were asking at the time why you're not as well-liked or approachable as you'd like to be. I often have difficulty making friends because of how much living in that mindset for as long as I have has affected my hypothetical "aura." People know I'm a protector / healer type, but definitely not in a hugger kind of way!
I suppose I can awkward and as much as I have been trying I believe the way I talk is taken not as I intend. A good friend recently said I "talk directly but that's just how I am". Though I'm not sure how I speak differently than others.
I'm not much a touchy person outside of relationships so that could also seem less friendly too. I will say that I avidly go out of my way to not be in charge, I dislike the attention it puts on me.
I appreciate the insight though. It probably is a culmination of those factors and possibly some more too. I still find it hard to think of myself that way knowing what goes on internally haha, often I struggle just dealing with cashiers
A girl in college once told me I have "beautiful, horse-like legs". I did martial arts at the time and my calves and thighs were very well toned, but I was actually a little self-conscious about them, and I had never considered horses to be particularly beautiful so I kind of took it as an insult after walking away from the conversation. It wasn't until I relayed the story to a colleague a few months later that they told me it was probably a genuine compliment.
I had seen this gentleman cleaning the floor near the bathrooms at a school district where I was working as a substitute at their district office one day. He looked like he was working up the courage to say something as I entered, but I really had to go.
When I walked out, he was at the end of the hallway, and as I was passing him, he said "...uh...n...n...nice shoes!". I was wearing a pair of well-worn sneakers, the exact opposite of nice shoes. I just said, "...thanks...?" with a puzzled look on my face, turned the corner, and never saw him again.
Upon reflection, my best guess was that he was an individual with an intellectual disability and that his case worker (or therapist or family member or something) had been trying to help him overcome his shyness and become more social by giving someone a compliment, and that resulted in him mustering up the courage to tell me I had nice shoes.
In the moment, a VERY weird interaction. But he was being genuine, and I feel bad now about not showing him I appreciated his kind words.
I had many strange encounters with random people as I often look like someone they know from TV or a band. One was on a university dance ball where there was an actual minor music star - young guy. He was getting a lot of attention and I was quite envious. I complained a bit and a bit more but then suddenly random girl approached me and asked: "Can I take a picture with you?" :)