On Complimenting Strangers

Unexpected inspiration.

Hi friends.

These past few months I had very deliberately started tracking interactions with strangers in my notebook. First because I had been alone in the woods most days so any interaction at all stood out and then I was on the road for a few days and on high alert for newness and finally later because I had landed back in my vibrant city where everyone was so funny and living in the present tense.

For example there were the neighbors up the road in Asheville who talked to me about which fruit trees the bears liked on the block, and I wrote down pears in my notebook.

And then there was the young woman who fell flat on her chest in the pool beneath the waterfall in South Carolina and we both helplessly watched as her sunglasses floated away and I could not stop thinking about how dirty her shirt got.

On the day I got back to New Orleans, on a very hot day, an old man told me to “stay cool, baby” in the most perfect, brief exchange at sunset. It was like giving each other a peace sign, but with words.

These are all just notes. These are my notes. These things seemed worth remembering. Why not just write shit down? It only takes a second.

There was an eight-year-old boy following me with a golf cart on a farm in Alabama, insisting on giving me a ride home and talking to me about his family trip to the Rocky Mountains. “Oh boy, when I got home all I wanted to do was get in my jammies,” he said.

And that pregnant woman in Georgia joyously, nearly lasciviously eating a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen, her t-shirt pulled up over her baby bump, the two of us nodding at each other as I dug into my dessert in my own horny way.

And a woman in caregiver scrubs smoking a cigarette on a stoop around the corner from my house, joking about how it was so hot you could fry an egg on these streets, an old joke, sure, but it sounded fresh coming from her mouth.

The world is so fucking alive, how are we not noticing everything and writing it all down all the time? All we have to do is pay attention a little bit.

But my favorite interactions come when I offer a compliment to a stranger because more often than not we get a little backstory in return.

I am thinking about how I complimented a waiter at dinner the other night on one of his rings, a thick silver band with a figure on it, and he solemnly told me it was his guardian angel.

I am thinking of the instant conversations that pop up when you tell someone they have a handsome dog. In fact, two days ago a man told me his dog had twice killed snakes and had survived the poison he ingested. He was proud of his terrier, who was only operating on instinct, he said.

I am thinking also of how in a gas station bathroom in Florida I told woman wearing a black dress with an ornate shiny silver pattern on it that it was pretty and, as she washed her hands, she replied, “I wish it was for a better occasion…she’s somewhere better now. Yes. She’s in a much better place now.” And then exited without saying goodbye.

I never give a compliment unless I mean it but also sometimes we can mean it if we simply think someone looks like they need a compliment today. It is worth saying what you’re thinking to make someone feel a little special, but also it is worth it for what you might get in return. A little story. Some evidence of humanity. Unexpected inspiration. And all you had to do was say something nice.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.