Not From This Planet

The best compliment I ever received was meant to be an insult. A true story from my teenage years.

The other day, I had a wonderful evening with my friend. We had a great conversation about our teenage years. At some point, she asked me if I got any memorable compliments back then.

I had a wide smile because I had a story in my pocket that I had been eager to tell for years. Every time I felt lost, I thought about this little insult that I received as a compliment, causing chaos in the classroom. Hah, I'm still giggling even thinking about it.

It happened in high school — technically, secondary school — during Religion class. Oh, no!

We had an exercise that day. The priest asked us to think and discuss the following:

“What does the world revolve around?”.

He asked kinda, “What is the most important thing in the world?”.

We had five minutes to think, but I knew my answer right away. 

But I still had to find a way to express it in words so people wouldn't misunderstand me. We had quite a fight about a few of my classmates flipping my words. As always I needed to be careful when choosing the right words.

Everyone had time to explain their answer.

The priest knew me very well, so he saved me for last.

He knew that I was going to spice up this conversation.

There were only ten people in this class—the poor things. We had to attend even though none of us were believers.

Some said the world revolved around love. Some talked about family, helping each other, or God.

It went well, until my turn.

They started booing and “Oh, no!” -ing.

All I said was that I think the world is about me.

The priest smiled and tried to calm the crowd. I insisted on elaborating. Really wanted to explain.

My idea was that the only world we know is our little world. All we know is our own experience, our own emotions. The world we know is inside us. I don’t know anyone else as good as my life.

The world revolves around me, for me. And the world is revolving around you, for you.

When you die, the world is still spinning fine, but for you, it’s over.

Whatever we feel, only we feel that.

We can share information, but because of the complexity of language, we will never be able to accurately describe to anyone what we feel or think.

They laughed.

I was seventeen. I thought I made sense.

The priest tried to reconcile my classmates with the fact that I was not thinking as a Christian and did not take me seriously.

Someone said I’m dumb.

This other girl — Marcela — replied:

-“Noémi is not dumb. She just can’t think in small. She always thinks big. She is like from a different planet.”

I said

-"Thank you, Marcela!"

Her eyes almost popped when her squeaking voice filled the room with this:

-“Do you see?! She thinks it’s a compliment. It’s not a compliment it's supposed to be an insult. You don’t understand what is that?”

I said I didn’t care because I liked this insult.

My friend was laughing hard. I felt good.

The priest said we should pray. So we did.

Thank you for reading!

I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did.

The Witty Witch