"My compliments, I think."

As I scanned my closet this morning, I spotted a long-sleeved, black dress shirt that I had not worn lately. It met the three requirements for selection as a part of my outfit: it was clean, it was not wrinkled, and it did not obviously clash with the slacks I had already pulled out. So, I wore it. I saw Miss Porter in the hall after lunch, and she said, "Well, this is different. You look nice today."

Ouch. She cut me. Cut me bad.

I am going to assume that Miss Porter's intended meaning was not what the statement sounded like. She laughed after saying it, and actually said something along the lines of "That's not what I meant." She told me that another teacher, we will call her Mrs. Neill, told her that a mouse caught on a sticky trap reminded her of Miss Porter. For some reason, Miss Porter did not see that as a compliment.

That has me thinking about how compliments are not always compliments, and insults are not always insults. For example, on that occasion that Miss Porter says, "Well, this is different. You look nice today," she is not trying to point out that my fashion choices are rarely ones I should be proud of, but rather that she has never seen me wear that shirt. Or maybe it was a little of both, and she is just too polite to say, "Dang Kohls, about time you pieced together something presentable." That is the beauty, and the rub, of the American English language.

Take the word simple. "Your life is a simple one" is not in any way derogatory. Most people would welcome a life that could be described that way. However, would the listener be willing to accept "You are, for lack of a better term, simple" as a positive assessment of her mental capabilities? If she is, in fact, simple, she might nod and smile, but that does not mean she accepts it as a compliment.

Think about the word "thoughtless". Break down the word, and one has a term meaning "without consideration, literally, without thought." No one wants to be called thoughtless; however, the statement "He rushed in without thought and helped the little girl" is obviously a compliment. It is a good thing to be thoughtless, or at least it would seem to be.

I would suppose, as with all things, it is context that rules the day. I hear young men in my class tell one another, "Dude, you look swole." That is a good thing. Swole, by the way, is a perverted and corrupted form of the verb to swell, past participle form of which is swollen, rolled around in the mouth of a 17 year old boy, and later spit out as "swole", meaning he has been made large by lifting weights. To turn to his left, however, and direct the same statement toward the petite young lass at the next table, "Girl, you look swole today," would most likely result in blushing, shocked silence, or an outburst of tears. "I knew these jeans make me look fat! I hate you!" I recommend not using that term to describe your pregnant wife either.

Heck, even calling someone the phonetic equivalent of fat is a compliment, as in "She's phat like Cindy Crawford." Now, if I could only find someone in my classes who still knows who Cindy Crawford is, that might have more meaning. At one time, Bad was a negative, but then it became a positive (remember Michael Jackson, when he was still the King of Pop? He was B-A-D bad. I am not really sure where MJ sits on the positive/negative scale right now).

So, be careful what you say, even when you are complimenting someone. It is odd that I put much thought into my outfits, but I do not need to be reminded of that deficiency very often. I am still trying to figure out exactly how reminding someone of a dead mouse on sticky strip is a good thing, but I am sure that is how she meant it. Maybe the little corpse was swole.