(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!
