(now THAT’S a moustache . . . )

(Lately, I’ve been having fun playing with words that strike me and writing a little about their definition and use.  I love words.  This post is an old one tweaked from the winter of 2012, back when I had three littles at home and drove my oldest to school every morning.  It was a challenging time, to say the least.)

Gumption noun

1. initiative,
aggressiveness, resourcefulness

2. courage, spunk, guts

Gumptious adjective

See above definitions.

Every day, while driving
my daughter to kindergarten drop-off in a van stuffed with four children
that I’d wrestled, wrapped and carted out one-by-one, I saw him.  Sometimes it was on the way to school,
sometimes on the way back home, but always, he appeared on the edge of the
horizon; regular, predictable, like the sunrise. 

I found him consistently
fascinating.

He ran along the side of
the road with a loose, loping gait. 
Drooping athletic pants swayed as he pressed forward, one step at a
time, his arms bent, hands in front of him.  A hat, or more often a white visor,
and white gloves completed his attire. 

But the thing that struck
me most was his moustache. 

It takes a certain kind of
moustache to attract the attention of a driver passing by with a van full of
noise and need at twenty miles an hour. 
Maybe you can picture it without me having to draw it out in fine detail,
but I will tell you it was brown and heavy yet, well-trimmed. 

He was a regular Tom
Sellek, my mustachioed man.

Something about his
regularity, the predictability of this sighting, this crossing of paths pleased
me. 

That, and his
moustache.   

It takes a little gumption
to sport a moustache like that, don’t you think?  And I guess there are times when we
could all use a little gumption.    

When’s the last time you noticed someone’s gumption or displayed a little gumption of your own?  I’d love to hear about it!

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