There’s this sort of weird thing some humans do where they just arbitrarily state a fact at another person. It’s generally not a fact they just became aware of, and to add on to the strangeness, it’s a fact about the person they’re talking with… directed towards the person they’re talking with.
They’ll say “you’re very smart” to a professional mathematician. Or “you’re very creative” to a painter with 30 years of experience. Or “you’re very athletic” to an Olympic runner.
It’s often not really prompted by anything. The person was probably only talking about an experience they’d had, and suddenly they’re confronted with something exceedingly factual like that they have nails or that there’s a particularly tree-like tree nearby. One is left to wonder if the fact-stater often points out to florists that they’re surrounded by flowers, or uses flashlights in the daytime.
It’s not an annoying practice, sort of endearing really. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I saw someone walking around inspecting things with a flashlight in broad daylight, that’d probably be someone I’d want to talk to. It’s just strange. The most exceptionally strange thing about it is that the expected response to this practice is gratitude.
You’re supposed to say “thank you.” The tree-like tree gets a free pass of course because it can’t talk, but the person in question is expected to beam with pride over being directly linked to an adjective that describes their chosen profession. Mind you, they haven’t been told they’re a great mathematician. They’re not being handed an olympic medal. It’d be like if we all walked around saying “this is morning” instead of “good morning” and the accepted dialogue was:
Person #1: “This is morning.”
Person #2: “Thank you, this IS morning.”
And so on and so forth.
