Speak Up

Last week, a stranger told me that they liked my voice.

This doesn’t sound very important. I didn’t act like it was at the time. But the thing is, it really meant a lot to me.

You see, I’ve been self-conscious

(About most everything, really, but that’s too big for one blog post, so let’s focus here.)

about my voice my entire adult life. And with reason. I mean, I was in my 20s having people ask if my mommy or daddy were home when I answered the phone. That was delightful. I was told by my bosses that I should go for voice lessons. Very confidence-building, that was. I used to like it when I had long work events because my voice would finally go all gravelly by the end. And even still now, especially when I’m nervous, or not paying attention to it, my voice will pitch up and sound really young. I’m afraid it even sounds like I’m putting it on on purpose. It makes me nuts, and that “when I’m nervous” part is the part I specially hate. Given away by my own voice!

So to have somebody say hey, sorry if this is odd, but when we were in that plenary session and you spoke up, I noticed that you have a really nice voice? That absolutely made my day.

(And before you ask, no, it was a lady, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a pickup line.)

I didn’t want to go into the whole rigamarole explanation

(And have her think I was as completely weird as I am)

so I just said thank you very much. But it made me think about how some little throwaway thing that you could say to someone might mean a lot more to them than you’d think. It’s worth saying those things, you know?