egotist |ēˈ●gə●tist|

"Are you an egotist?!"

The man barking the words at Charles looked to be nearly 90.  He had sparse wisps of white hair not really covering his scalp.  They were supposed to form a combover, but the wind had blown them loose and they did not conceal the top of his head which was so transparent it couldn't hide large numbers of bulging blue veins.  He was wearing loose-fitting wool slacks, a red cardigan and old-man athletic shoes:  sturdy, earth-toned and with very substantial soles.  He drove a clean and new-looking mini-SUV type car.  It was safe and stylish, but modestly conservative.

We had just pulled up to a gas pump outside of Costco.  Charles had gotten in line behind one set of pumps when he noticed another pump that was free, so he quickly maneuvered our little Honda into place next to the open pump.  The whole time he was doing so, we could hear a car approaching with its horn blaring.  The driver had lain on the horn at the entrance to the gas station, and the sound continued almost until he pulled up next to us, at another just-vacated pump.  The older man had apparently spotted OUR newly available pump at about the same moment we did, and had had his eye on it from 100 feet away.  He was yelling at Charles with the window down as he approached.  Charles was already out of the car swiping our cards in the process of filling our tank when the older man pulled up.  I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car and I could see the faces of all the other customers and the attendant.  They had been startled and bothered by the sound of the horn, were watching the hostile old man make his approach, were watching Charles fill our tank, and were nervously wondering if they were about to witness an ugly confrontation. They had their heads mostly down, but they were peering up through their eyelashes, furtively, too embarrassed to look straight on but unable to look away.

The man didn't hear Charles's first words because he was still hollering out his window.  Charles had said, "Sorry about that.  You having a bad day?"

I didn't hear the old man's response, but I heard the attendant say quietly to Charles, "You're a way nicer man than I am."

Out of his car now, he continued to holler angrily, "You're not 18!  Stop driving so impulsively!  You're dangerous!"  The old man was not softening a bit, even though Charles, dressed in his suit--fresh from a visit to the temple, approached him with apologetic words, spoken in a soft voice.

Charles  in his suit.

Charles noticed a tag on his shirt that said something about "oncology" as he talked to the man, and he figured it indicated that he was in cancer treatment, or that perhaps someone he loved was in treatment.

I still couldn't hear anything Charles said, but I watched the other drivers shaking their heads at the behavior of the man.  They finished their transactions and drove off, sensing that there wasn't going to be an altercation.

We finished pumping our gas, joked with the attendant about quittin' time, and headed home.  The older gentleman was still there, filling his tank and muttering under his breath.  As we neared the exit, I noticed a woman driving toward us who had been ahead of us at the pump.  She had exited the parking lot and decided to do a 180 and pull back in.  She was rolling her window down and slowing as she approached.  Charles rolled our window down to hear what she had to say.

"I just wanted to say thank you for how you handled that.  That was so nice of you.  People just don't do that anymore.  Really."

Charles said, "I'll probably be just like that in a few years.  I hope people will be nice to me!"

As we rehashed the incident on the way home, Charles asked, "What's an egotist?"

"I have a guess," I said, "but I've only heard that word used in black and white movies, so I'm not positive.  Let's look it up when we get home!"

It turns out that an egotist is someone who talks and thinks about himself excessively because of an undue sense of self-importance.

Is Charles an egotist?  I'll answer that.

No.

I'm so proud of him.

unctuous (ˈəng(k)choōəs)

My daughter Lola recommended that I write a new post, and I requested that she provide a WFTD (Word For The Day, remember?)  for me to blog about.  She couldn't think of one, but in that same facebook conversation a friend suggested the word "unctuous."  I committed to blogging about it, so here we are.  I've looked it up, and unctuousness is not a good thing.  I truly hope that my facebook friend did not suggest the word as a way to inform me about one of my many faults. 

 (I don't think that's the case, though, because this friend of mine is too astoundingly, amazingly nice to do that.  If you needed it, he'd give you the shirt off his back, and then get another shirt on so he could offer to give you THAT shirt, too!  He's so amazing that I think they should give him the Medal of Honor for general niceness, or the Nobel Peace Prize.  Actually, I bet he's already won those awards.)

Unctuous means excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily. I really hope I don't come across that way to my friends and family.

(Of course, my friends and family are so a-MAZE-ing, that I know they wouldn't ever think that of me, even if it were true.  They are so incredibly and awesomely fantastic that if I needed money, they would ask how much I needed and then give me THREE TIMES that amount!)
My hope is that I come across as someone who is brave and smart--willing to take a stand for important things. Unfortunately,  in actuality I'm more of the 'Fraidy-cat type.  Not only am I too passive to take a stand in important matters, but I'm also too scared to let my voice be heard in UNimportant matters.  Case in point:  I have a secret desire to be a vandal.  I don't really want to destroy property, I want to improve it--bring a little sunshine to others like myself who spend hours each day in their cars, and who are forced to look at the same signage around town over and over again.  I have wanted, for years, to sneak out in the night, "creatively alter" the signs in my neighborhood, and unleash my worldview on the whole town . . . . but I can't!  

  

These signs are all over the place.  I want to spray paint an angry "GRRRRRRR!" sort of face on each one to show how frustrated these signs are that they have NO OUTLET --for their creativity, their passion, their talents, their opinions!  They are totally oppressed!!  

I'm too chicken, and I have legitimate reasons for being so.  Allow me to tell a background story.  When I was 17 years old, a few friends wanted to go toilet papering and they wanted to include me.  It shouldn't have been a big deal!  Toilet papering is not really even mean-spirited; it's just youthful hilarity.  However, I told them that they shouldn't invite me along because (I swear I actually said this) if I went, we would all get busted.  Well, well, well, wouldn't you know we DID get busted!  A sharp-eyed young man (with a crush on the girl whose house we were TP-ing) saw us and called the "police" in our town.  In the process of the shakedown, one of my friends actually got belted across the face by one of the "officers" who thought my friend was being a smart aleck. 
(Now, of course, the handsome, astute and swarthy young security officer was doing his duty--a man of nobility and grace, to be sure!)
It was an ugly situation, and it illustrates why I am such a goody-goody.  If I ever attempt to step off the straight and narrow, something seems to scream out to the powers that be, "LOOK AT ME!  I'M DOING SOMETHING NAUGHTY!  COME CATCH ME IN THE ACT AND INFLICT PUNISHMENT UPON ME!"
Indulge me, please, as I give one more brief background story.  It involves someone very close to me who will probably wish to remain anonymous.  So, for the sake of preserving her dignity, I'll call her "Mom."

I would love to climb up on this billboard, paint a Groucho Marx schnozz on the man and change the last word from "HONOR" to "HUMOR."  The sign would then read, "Dedicated to a sense OF HUMOR."  Honor and humor are not mutually exclusive! Every soldier I know is hilarious, making the statement so true!  ***see disclaimer, below

I was probably 10 or 11 years old and was sitting in my living room watching TV one evening.  "Mom" came into the room and told me to turn off the TV and go to bed.  For some reason, that command was the straw that broke the camel's back.  In that moment, the injustice of my life rose up inside me and I was filled with a fearful rage against the force that had compelled me, every night for as long as I could remember, to stop doing what I wanted to be doing and go to bed. With a fury I could scarcely control, I turned to "Mom" and said these words:  "Who put YOU in charge?  Why do YOU always get  to BOSS EVERYONE AROUND!"  
It was interesting, because the wrath that had seemed so unstoppable just split seconds before had already left me by the time I finished my sentence.  It left me, and jumped very quickly into "Mom."  As I watched the rage contort her face (all this in 2-3 seconds, mind you) I wished with all my quivering heart that I could grab those words out of the air and shove them back in my mouth.  Such was not to be.  Instead, "Mom" marched straight towards me, stood me up by my hair, dragged me down the hall and deposited me in my bedroom.  All the while I'm screaming,
 "I'msorry! I'msorry! I'msorry! I takeitback! I takeitbaaaaaaaack!!
I was absolutely pathetic at civil disobedience, and I have remained so to this day.
(This Mom character, though, she's GREAT at civil disobedience!  She's great at everything and I mean everything.  There's not a thing you could name that she isn't great at.  She could seriously win awards in every single kind of category there is.  Especially forgiveness of her children when they tell unflattering tales.  She's fantastic at that!)
I'm telling you all this "background" so you'll know why the signs in my town have nothing to fear from me.  Though I wish, every single time I see them, that I could deface them in my own uplifting way, it will never happen. 

Someone has already done the dirty work for me, here.  Each day I drive past four cars in this used car lot, each with one letter of the word "SALE' in its open mouth.  I always want to ask to test drive one of those specific cars, just to make it  say "ALE" or "SAL" for an hour or two. 

Now that I've read over this post, I realize that I haven't blogged about the word unctuous at ALL, really.  I apologize from the bottom of my heart.

 ( But knowing the kind of blog-readers you are--sophisticated,  intelligent, insightful, charismatic, beautiful and just all-around excellent in every way, much like how I imagine royalty would be--I'm sure you'll be good enough to overlook that little fact.)

*** my desire to vandalize the military recruitment billboard has everything to do with how easily the words "sense of honor" could be changed into the phrase "sense of humor" and does not in any way indicate disrespect for the honorable servicemen and women of our country.