My Cup of Tea

So, I have a blog. . .

At this point, I'm not quite sure what to do. For some reason I find myself feeling that introductions are in order. Fortunately, you probably already know me. Unfortunately, this renders the expected pleasantries unnecessary. I find myself, like I happened to hear my younger brother (who just turned 12 today; happy birthday, Nate!) a few months ago, absentmindedly singing “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you!” and then, finding that I don't know what comes next, humming along until I get to “MY CUP OF TEA,” because that's the next part that I know.

Well, I'll tell you, some social niceties are not exactly my cup of tea. (Or maybe they are, because really, I don't drink tea much—just some herbal varieties that I've deemed tolerable.) I'm not necessarily anti-social, I just don't know how to handle certain circumstances. I know I will always be around others, and I've memorized patterns that usually resemble common courtesy. But as adept as I may be (or think myself to be), I still find myself in situations thinking “Maybe we should kill this conversation to put it out of its misery . . . oh, wait. It seems it died awhile ago.”

It's something I've come to accept. I was socially inept as a child, gawky as a pre-teen, and awkward as a teenager. I will probably live out my life just a little uncomfortable around people. There will always be situations that defy protocol. I'm okay with it. My concern is not for myself, but for those I deal with. Sorry, guys!

I recently had a baby and was reminded as everyone glowed over her, that one of my major hang-ups has always been compliments. Not giving them, but knowing what to do with them when others give them to me. I'm not the only one here, am I? I know I'm not, because I have a sister who used to respond to compliments by winding her hands through her blonde hair and saying “I know!” in a somewhat dazed but confident three-year-old voice. Not wanting to replicate her brazen “tooting her own horn” as my grandma called it, I squirmed with a pained look on my face every time anybody paid me anything that could be construed to be complimentary.

My parents have given me and my siblings numerous lessons on how to deal with compliments. When a stranger commented on our beautiful blue eyes—“You can say thank you!” accompanied by a soft nudge to the arm. When a ward member glowed over our talents following a musical number in church—“You can say thank you!” and a tap on the head. When my dance date observed in a pained voice that must have been drilled into him by his mom, that I looked nice—“You can say thank you!” with a smile and raised eyebrows.

Eventually, I got the idea from somewhere that I could say thank you when people complimented me. I have found this method to be entirely socially acceptable. However, though it works well for brief encounters with kind words, I'm still at a loss of what to do when compliments exceed, say, 3.5 seconds. You can only smile, nod, and say “Thanks!” for so long before it becomes clear that your short etiquette CD is skipping and you are doomed to repeat for the duration of the compliment.

So, if you are one of the many kind people that has complimented me or my baby recently, I repeat, thank you. And please excuse my idiosyncratic spasms.