"She has the smile of a social worker"
What's the most I-Get-You compliment you've ever received?
A pickleball friend told me yesterday that she was describing me to someone else and said (of me): “She has the smile of a social worker.” Seeing my slack-jawed face, she quickly and worriedly assured me she meant that as a positive. Um YES that’s a compliment. HELL yes!
I think my slow processing of the comment was more just my brain trying to evaluate, Chat GPT style, whether anyone had ever said anything similar to me in my life. I’m certain this was a first. As someone who’s online too much, I think I get jaded about catch phrases and bland jargon-y comments. So the specificity of this compliment, and all it evoked, made me happy for the entire day.
It’s worth mentioning, but I don’t think it’s terribly relevant here, that my first job was as a — you guessed ‘er — social worker. After college I moved from the Midwest to New York City and got a job as a social worker in a truancy prevention program based at 107th and Broadway. (The nonprofit doesn’t exist anymore, but my first boss at the agency was Geoffrey Canada, years before he founded The Harlem Children’s Zone. Talk about setting the bar high for a first boss…an absolute legend.) Here’s my honest performance review of me as a social worker: I did the job diligently and poured my heart into it, but I don’t think my skills were a match. I didn’t (and don’t) have the tenacity and sharpness of the best NYC social workers and I was in over my head. Career-wise, there were other vistas ahead for me. Still, I wouldn’t trade a minute. It was like cramming 10 years of life experience into a 2 year space. I don’t know how ever-present my smile was, though. It was stressful. And my clients were dealing with life stuff that I’d never even imagined in my South Dakota brain. I’m sure real social workers like
would’ve managed a whole lot better than I did.
So why did “smile of a social worker” compliment delight me so much? I think it means that I want to hear your story — the weirder the better — and if you need me to do something, I’m generally game. I’m not sure, in fact, if I’ve ever received a nicer compliment. What I try to put out there in the world came back the way I wanted it to. A moment of exhilaration.
I keep notes on the kinds of things I want mentioned in my obituary. (There she goes again, always with the obituaries.) This comment went on the list tout de suite. Not everything on my list is complimentary. I have a lot of what you might charitably call eccentricities. I wholeheartedly believe the best obituaries are a mix of the good and the utter mess. (My 177k obituary-reading TikTok followers agree: we like damaged people and we are all damaged people.)
I made a little video about it. In the video, I asked what little details you want to make sure get in your obituary. The only rule: no cliches. No “never met a stranger” or “smile lit up a room.” The comments on the video are perfectly unique and utterly delightful in every way. Go find them and it’ll make your day. And maybe YOU start a note on your phone about the things you want included in your obit? If so, I’d adore hearing what rises to the top. Don’t forget the weird stuff.