And holding back ain’t gonna do no good
There are some things I’m not good at. Saying thank you is one of them. Especially when I really properly mean it.
First off I don’t find that it’s a particularly immediate response for me. Not that I wasn’t taught my Ps and Qs when I was small, not at all. I was taught properly and all that, but I was also taught that it’s much more important to not need so say it. To be self reliant enough that you don’t need to thank people. Except of course my mother and grandmother clearly had higher hopes than my self-reliant abilities match, so I am quite often in need of help.
Second it frequently results in a response of the same, which for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I find unbelievably embarrassing. It’s a bit like intellectual and personality based compliments. So for instance say a random person says “oh that’s a pretty dress” I can say “why thank you” easily and mean it, and not feel weird. However, if you compliment something that I have done I am in squirm central. An old boss of mine once launched into an horrendously flattering assessment of my abilities and I burst into tears. People saying thank you to me has a similar response, though rarely as extreme I should add.
I am getting better at saying thank you to people, and realising when I have been remiss, but I am still very uncomfortable with people saying thank you to me. So for instance on Tuesday JNBT very kindly paid my trainfare when the buses were being wussie and had closed up shop. On the train I managed a mumbled thank you, but once I got toward home I had a bit of a panic that he’d think I was rude so I bought him some cakes (McVities Irish Cream for the interested, I think they’re rather nice, whether anyone else does is another matter). I gave them to him this afternoon, and he said thank you (because clearly manners come more easily to him than to I), and I couldn’t look at him when he said it. Thus he said thank you twice more, I think possibly because he thought I didn’t hear him, and I just could not look at the man.
I’m currently nursing a huge wadge of guilt that I haven’t properly thanked someone else at college this week, so I’m currently trying to decide what foodstuff to use to say thank you in lieu of my chronic inability to say thank you in a timely and meaningful manner.
Tags: college, embarrassment, jnbt, snow, thank you
