The Ultimate Compliment
She was very kind. She accurately recalled my favourite chocolate. It was a small enough brand to be unique but not too obscure that it couldn’t be found locally. The brand was based internationally and that was part of its charm; it reminded me of home. She found it in a local store and gave it to me on one of the few occasions we saw each other. “I love Whittaker’s” I exclaimed. “I know”, she replied with a knowing smile. “You remembered”, I said as I stared at the chocolate bar and my mouth moistened in anticipation. I lifted my head, my gaze met hers, “Thank you”. This was a comforting compliment but the other compliment I gave her, the ultimate compliment caused her great angst.
A few weeks ago, as I wandered past a local pizza restaurant, a friendly couple invited me to join them for dinner. I must have appeared particularly lonely and they happened to be especially spontaneous. In addition to inviting me to join them for dinner, they had been skydiving 18 months prior with a taxi driver in Peru, swam in shark-infested waters without a cage, and hosted a party in a stranger’s house whom they met as they wandered the streets of Seattle.
They were married. It had been two and a half years. Everything was going well for them. They told me about a time he was in London and she was in Miami, about four years before they were married; in the nascent phase of their relationship. He decided to play a fun game. He sent her the names of six train stations, five were real and one was fake and her task was to determine which one was fake. As he sent the message, a sense of peace descended upon him. How lucky he felt that he had found someone that he could share his fun game with. As she received the message, a sense of dread arose as what if she didn’t guess correctly, what if she got the answer wrong, what if this person who she was lucky enough to find saw her flaws?
This was one of their favourite stories in their shared journal which they decided to write one year before they got married. He was shocked to learn that she felt that way on that day. To him, it was a fun game, an expression of himself, a moment of vulnerability but one that he was willing and enthusiastic to share because he knew that she would not prey on his expression of vulnerability. She did not see it the same way. To her, she risked embarrassing herself, exposing her ignorance and potentially repelling a future spouse.
I shared my thoughts and ideas with you, my fun games, my silent contemplations. I meant it as a compliment but the silence suggests you took it as condemnation.