In the darkest of times…
The nicest thing anyone ever said to me was, "You must have a lot of friends."
It was an observation made by a chubby adolescent boy who randomly befriended me on a train. I had been up to Berkeley to visit a friend for the weekend, and was cramming for a test I had in Logic class on Monday.
This boy took a seat across from me on the nearly empty train and had no reservations about striking up a conversation with me. I, in turn, had no problem with the interruption, and welcomed the intervals of chit chat we had in between my attempted bouts of studying.
I don’t remember what we talked about, nothing important or in-depth, obviously, but at some point, it came up that I was gay. After a pause to register the information, he simply accepted the news and kept talking with the same jolly ease with which he’d started
The compliment about my having lots of friends came shortly thereafter. His stop was the first or second one after I’d gotten on, so it was a short, sweet chat, and that was that.
The reason it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me is because it’s not exactly true, yet it’s an indirect statement of rather profound praise, especially coming from someone who’s only known you fairly briefly. And having as he did that kid-like quality of bald honesty, I was struck by the genuine, unprompted nature of the inadvertent compliment.
What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to you?
