The Correct Response is THANK YOU MORON

I can't take a compliment.

The sad truth is that I never have been able to. It is ridiculous, I am a grown woman and it is downright rude to brush off compliments from people about anything. I am not sure where this comes from, except that my mother can't do it either. Of course from her it is charming, I come off as some sort of drooling and arrogant bitch.

I take it back, I can take a compliment. If I concentrate VERY hard. I just say THANK YOU, which is all that is necessary. I manage this all the time because J is actually good with the compliments. But in my family it is normal to just joke back at the person and be incredibly fucking rude. Being rude is how we show we like you.

So something must have registered on my face when a guy at my office mentioned that I looked nice today. What a nice thing to say, and did I manage to croak out the correct response? I DID. But I sort of blurted it weirdly and since this guy is as socially awkward as me he seemed all embarassed and like freaked out like I was going to tattle to his wife or something and then I felt bad because why freak the man out he was just being polite and my god none of this would have happened if either of us were anything but socially impaired morons who just need to relax goddamn it.

It did go slightly better than the last time he commented that I look nice in skirts and I said, "Really, I always wonder if I look like a transvestite."

AT WORK. IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE.

It is a wonder that I haven't been hired to write an etiquette book.