I couldn’t believe my luck in finding a website that actually detailed ten (TEN!) different ways that a compliment can be a bad thing.  Before you think it’s all due to “political correctness,” it’s actually not.  It appears that many people simply don’t know how to give a compliment. Or maybe they do, but it’s a sneaky way to give two competing messages.

               For example, when someone says, “Oh, nice outfit!  Much better than what you usually wear,” it’s a compliment initially. But the second part indicates that the person usually dresses very poorly.  Maybe it’s bad taste or lack of good clothing, but either way, the person walks away feeling ….good, but not good?

               I have first-hand experience with these kinds of compliments.  Honestly, most of the time, they’re just mis-speaks and I tend to find them hysterical.  My mother-in-law, rest her soul, once complimented my new hairstyle.  This was about 20 years ago, and I had worn my hair short for about a decade.  After I let it grow a bit and got a little wave in it, she commented, “Oh, your hair looks so nice!  It’s so much more flattering than before.” So for ten years, she didn’t like my hair, but didn’t say anything?

               Actually, this would not be typical of her at all and I quickly realized she was simply trying to be nice about my hair.

               But one could get a complex after a while with this type of compliment.  I continued to let my hair grow that year. Usually letting your hair grow means it looks pretty bad for a while.  I was washing dishes one afternoon, with my back to the door and a dear friend came in and said, “Gosh, your hair looks good!”  I turned around to thank her and she added, “From the back.”

               I guess my growing-out bangs did not look so hot!  Again, this made me laugh.  In fact, it’s become something we say around our family often.  If any of us say, “that chair looks good,” or “that paint job looks good,” another of us typically adds, “from the back.” It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, it just makes us all smile.

               Back in my thirties I had gained some weight and really struggled to lose it.  I had a bad morning and was tearing up a bit and complaining to my hubby that I felt fat and ugly.  He was so supportive, hugging me and comforting me.  I was halfway to work on my drive that I realized what he had actually said was, “you’re not a bit ugly.”  But…I was fat? 

               It’s become another funny thing for our family to say.  I think the best thing to do when someone gives you a compliment that isn’t really a compliment, is to just turn it into a joke.  Laughing always makes everything a bit more bearable. 

               So when I spent a week painting a room in our house and another friend came over and remarked, “Did you mean to paint it this color?” I just laughed.  I inferred that she didn’t like the color and I thought it was funny.  I also thought it was a good thing she doesn’t live here!

Disaster might be too strong a word for those cooking fails that many of us have experienced. Cooking is one of my favorite past times, but to my knowledge my dishes have never claimed lives, so it’s certainly not on a par with the Titanic, the Hindenburg or a tsunami.  But it sure feels like a disaster when you’ve worked hard presenting a lovely meal to your family and it falls flat (sometimes literally).

               My first cooking failure was my first dish ever.  I got up early one morning when I was about 7 years old to prepare breakfast for my family.  I poured juice, made coffee and put fresh cut berries on all the bowls of cereal.  My mom, dad, and two brothers all gathered and began to eat.  Soon, spoons clattered to the table.  My dad was the only one who gamely finished his Cheerios, proclaiming it was his “new favorite.” I had inadvertently covered the grain and berries with the milk I grabbed from the fridge – which happened to be buttermilk.

               Fast forward to 8 years later.  My mom was in the hospital having surgery and I prepared dinner.  It was pretty easy – cottage cheese and pineapple (hard to mess up) and macaroni and cheese.  I followed the directions carefully and it looked great.  Unfortunately, I had not read the directions quite carefully enough and instead of adding ¼ teaspoon of salt, I added ¼ cup of salt.  The briny dish was too much, even for my supportive father.  We ended up going out for a burger.

               These early catastrophes didn’t diminish my joy in learning to cook and after a decade or so, I actually became pretty good.  But still, every artist has a few bad projects, right?  My husband swears that my cooking is one of the reasons he fell in love with me.  We knew each other for five years before we were married, so he had lots of opportunities to sample my cooking and I’m sure he expected a lifetime of great meals.

               So, of course, a big wave came along.  The very first week of our marriage, I picked up a package of four pork chops at the local grocery store. I prepared some lovely vegetables in cheese sauce to go with them and grilled two of them under the broiler with a little salt and pepper.  They looked great.  We sat down to enjoy them and probably, maybe, might have.  If we could have cut them with anything less than a chainsaw.  No knife I owned would slice them and we couldn’t tear them apart with our teeth.  Those chops were rocks.

               My dear hubby was most kind about it and we had PB & J with our veggies.  But the next day, I stewed about this for hours.  Then I was inspired.  What if I took those other two pork chops, tenderized them a bit, and baked them in the oven, long and slow, with a mushroom gravy.  That would make them just right.  So that’s what I did.

               I made several discoveries that evening.  The first is that if you get a package of tough pork chops, this baking method will not change that.  The second thing I discovered is that my husband doesn’t like mushroom gravy, even on a good pork chop.  And the last thing I discovered is that he has a long memory. 

               Many decades later, I made some horrible cole slaw from a recipe that looked interesting in a magazine.  My husband, son and I all made faces when we took our first bites.  I knew it was destined for the trash can, but before I could say anything, my husband said to our son, “Don’t say a word.  If you do, we’ll get it tomorrow, covered in mushroom gravy.”

               Culinary disasters.  Have you had one?

Most technology is growing at a rate that is simply beyond my capabilities. It took me months, for example, to learn how to “hang up” the phone once the technology firms decided that to end a call you just need to press a little red button.

               Nowadays, to get some phones to activate, all you have to do is say “Okay, Google.” Supposedly. I’ve spent hours of my life saying this phrase over and over, louder and louder, while moving closer and closer to the phone.

               Usually I do these antics when I’m wrist deep in meatball mix or cookie dough and need to call someone or check a recipe. So yelling “Okay Google” for 10 minutes isn’t really saving me time. I might as well just wash my hands and check it manually.

               But the voice activation isn’t my only problem. There’s that dratted auto-correct.  Part of the auto-correct issue, for me, is that it changes words that I don’t want changed. So then I have to correct the correction, which is a big time-waster.  The other problem (and I confess, this is bigger) is that I have a tendency to press “send” before proofreading. So, there’s that.

               For some reason, if I try to type “Kent” (our son’s name) and I accidentally hit the “L” instead of the “K” first, the phone always types “Levy” right away.  Levy is not a name or a word that I have ever knowingly used, so I have no idea why the phone wizard thinks I want to type it all the time.  And even if I get “KEN” put in, the phone will helpfully insert “keep” instead.  Wouldn’t you think a smart phone would pick up on words you type many times a day?

               It also creates havoc. The other day, our son asked me to keep him posted on a friend of ours, David, who had been tested for covid. I typed “D’s test was negative!  Yea!” and pressed send.  I didn’t realize that the microchip computer in my phone had helpfully altered it to read “Dad’s test was negative!  Yea!” So naturally, our son was a little concerned and typed back, “Dad was tested?  Why??”

               No, Dad is fine, is covid-free and did not get tested. Why is my phone trying to help me?? I don’t need this stress!

               Once, early on in my war with autocorrect, I thought I would try the voice-to-text feature.  I figured this would really be the way to go.  So I said to the phone, “text Laura” to tell her “safe travels.”  She was going away for a weekend. The phone said, “here’s your message, ready to send?” and I said yes without reading it, because how could it mess this up??!!  What I didn’t know is that it could mess it up quite nicely and, in addition, it would add my aside comment to my husband after I thought it was sent.  So what Laura received on her end was, “mobile smiles jammers why are they going there anyway it’s silly.”

               Yeah, that was fun to explain.

               I’m not only losing battles, I might be losing this war.

I think it’s true that you learn something new every day.  Most of the time, we learn from our local newspaper or radio. We discover what restaurants are opening, what the covid numbers are, or who was arrested for some crime. Once in a while, I learn something that makes me realize that I’ve been wrong about some “fact” or other for years.  This week, I learned something that I not only haven’t known for decades but have been totally wrong about!

               I’ve always enjoyed music and love to sing along in the car (or shower) to my favorite songs. There are a few songs that defy accurate lyric singing, so for those I just “do-do” along until we get to parts I know.  I’m not sure anyone really knows the lyrics to Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  Other than “jumpin’ jack flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas,” of course.  So we just croon along, making up words to that one. I suppose I could look up the lyrics, but I’m not sure it would help me that much.

               I do have a friend who sang “there’s a bathroom on the right” for a long time to Bad Moon Rising.  That always tickled me, since the correct words are practically in the title!  Apparently, that’s a pretty common mistake.

               My husband had a friend in high school who happily sang along to the Supremes’ Stop! In the Name of Love.   But she sang, “Stop! In the Neighborhood,” which makes sense lyrically, but still.  It’s the title, for heaven’s sake! And it’s really not that hard to hear, is it?

               There was a song popular when I was in college that had a refrain that went, “I wanna know have you ever seen the rain?”  Many of my dorm-mates would sing along to this, but they sang, “I wanna know have you ever seen Lorraine?”  This didn’t make sense at all, considering the rest of the lyrics.  Again, the words being in the title made me think they might have been doing this on purpose.

               None of these gaffs are as embarrassing as mine last week, though.  I was babysitting my grandson and we were watching a popular babies’ video.  (I learned there are popular videos for babies, that day, too.  Who knew?) These animated and colorful folks sing all kinds of songs, with close captioning even. This is the one that has “Baby Shark Do Do Do Do Do.”  Maybe you’ve heard of this. It’s the Barney of this generation, I think.

               Anyway, I was happily singing along to the old standby “London Bridges.” I was belting it out to my little guy, making him giggle and coo and then it happened!  I glanced at the close captioning and did a triple take.  For over 50 years, I have been singing:  “London bridges, falling down.”  I thought that all the bridges in London were falling down. So that’s what I’ve been singing.  But it turns out that the correct lyric is “London Bridge is falling down.”

               My husband says that there is only the one “London Bridge,” and that’s the one bridge that’s falling down.  I guess I should have figured it out a long time ago. While I may learn something new every day, thank goodness, it’s not always embarrassing!