I'll Take that as a Compliment

This little memory made me laugh today.

I spent a lot of time at HMC in the 3rd floor kitchen making coffee, eating yogurt, and helping Seb B make pasta dish after pasta dish.

It was probably during 3rd or 4th week and I was wearing a tan turtle neck kind of shirt and my dark maroon, brass buttoned jacket. This jacket has always made me feel cool and kind of funky elegant. It's one of those articles of clothing that always makes you feel like you look better than normal.

So by 3rd or 4th week things were pretty much going and I'd kind of gotten used to things, I at least finally had friends that I felt comfortable around. I was making coffee or something when Seb B came into the kitchen to start making dinner and I started jabbering on about this or that and after I'd quieted down and asked him if he wanted me to grate some cheese, he said, "Yes, grate some cheese, and you're looking very, mmm, mundane today with that jacket."

I think I made some noise like, "huh" or "heh." I might have made a little comment like, "Wow. Mundane."

Seb B has a delightful habit of giving compliments to girls that could be taken slightly offensively like, "You're at every meal and you're always early. You must really like to eat." Which is the first thing he said to me besides, "I think I'm your neighbor." So I thought he was trying to give me one of his Seb-esque compliments, because being able to eat a lot is a good thing to him, but I couldn't figure the compliment in saying that I looked mundane. Did he mean I looked like a normal, down to earth, friendly girl, who's easy to approach and non-pretentious? What I couldn't figure out was that he was also very good with the kinds of compliments every girl likes. For instance, the first formal dinner we had I wore a dress and we walked to dinner together and he commented on how smart I looked. Using the word "smart." And while "smart" isn't a word we use to describe a pretty girl in the States, I knew that's how it was used in England.

So I must not have given the response he expected from a girl who'd just been called mundane, because he said the word again a little questioningly. "Mundane. That's an English word right?" I confirmed and he asked me what it meant, because he knew it was a word in English, but it might not have been the word he really wanted to use.

"It means plain and boring. When something is mundane, it's repetative and there is nothing special about it."

He said, "Well that is not the word I want to use. Mondän is a word we have in German and it means sophistocated, um. A woman who is kind of, chic and feminine. You don't have this word in English?" Nope, he'd just called me boring.

We laughed about it and how confused we both were with each other for about 25 seconds.

That jacket is gone. It was lost on an over night ferry to Santorini Island. Sometimes things happen that way.

Now I cannot hear the word mundane and not think of feeling a bit chic.