I am perfectly content eating meals by myself so long as I have a book with me. I have a goal of reading one book a week for pleasure, along with however many I need to read to prepare for podcast interviews. Most of our interviews do not require reading a book beforehand, but there are five or ten a year that do.
On this particular day, I was reading 500 Words You Should Know by Caroline Taggart — a book I had picked up at the library. I have a decent vocabulary, and I figured I would know the vast majority of these words anyway, but a refresher course is good now and then.
This book was way more complicated than what I was expecting. Many of the words were basically unusable because words that 99% of my audience don’t know aren’t good to use. Occasionally using atavistic or ratiocination or amanuensis is probably okay, but regularly using a bunch of them makes readers turn away. Although I could live with it if people respected and admired me for a fine vocabulary, I know from experience that reactions to me using a lot of complicated typically include such comments as, “That Dancer guy is really an a**hole!”
Unfortunately, the words used as previous examples were some of the easier ones in this book! For example, in the first chapter I came across callipygian, which refers to having nicely shaped buttocks. I’m not sure if it’s better if my audience does or doesn’t know this word. If they do know it, it has an extra degree of un-usability in today’s world of sexual harassment and #metoo. While I did memorize the word, I figured I would never use it.
I was mistaken.
On this particular Saturday, I was playing on the first day of a two-day slot tournament at the M. Although I don’t go to all of their events, this one was lucrative enough to interest me. As is typical for that casino, they give each invited guest one tournament entry per day and you can earn up to two more per day based on your play. In addition, playing $2,000 coin-in on a video poker machine (less required on slots) earns you a free seafood buffet that retails for a nickel less than $45. Since the same coin-in can be used to earn extra tournament entries and qualify for the buffet, you can figure out where I ate that day. And you can also bet that I had a book with me.
Before the tournament, you swipe your player’s card at a kiosk and print out however many tournament entries you have. Some people come in just for the free entry, but if I’m going to take the time and energy to show up, I’m getting the extra ones as well. Getting two good scores out of six is much easier than getting two good scores out of two. So, on this day I had my three entries.
They have some permanent employees in the Special Events department, but they hire part-timers as well. They have different promotions occurring on different days, so having an army of temporary workers allows them to staff their events without having more people on their payroll than they usually need. On this day, the lady checking to verify that the name on my entries, player’s card, and ID were all the same was probably 80 years old and I had never seen her before. She had a nametag that said, “Mary.”
Although I’m hypothesizing, Mary didn’t look like she needed the job. She looked instead like she really liked people and was looking for something interesting to do with her time. She checked what she needed to check efficiently, noticed the title of the book I was carrying, and pleasantly asked, “What new word did you learn today?”
Mary’s tone of voice had me guessing that this lady was a retired elementary schoolteacher. Her question was friendly, and I could just sense her telling generations of school children that if you can’t use a word in a sentence, you don’t know it well enough.
So, I told her. “Callipygian.”
She scrunched up her face and said in an interested voice. “Oh! I don’t know that one. I like learning new words! What does it mean?”
I now had a choice to make. There are lots of ways to say, “nicely shaped buttocks.” Some you could say in elementary school. Some you shouldn’t. Some appropriate to say to a nice lady. Some not so appropriate.
I made a judgment call that Mary was a good sport and had a nice sense of humor, so I told her straight out.
“It means you have a beautiful ass!”
She looked a bit startled, and then smiled with delight. “Nobody has said that to me in decades! You have really made my day!”
Her delight made my day as well. My scores in those tournament rounds were very un-remarkable, but my day was memorable, nonetheless. That was fun! And I’m learning some new words in case I run into that lady again.
And the next word will have nothing to do with the size and shape of her body parts. As a one-off situation, this time was fine. If I only gave her words that had some possible sexual connotation, it would either imply that I’m a really creepy guy or maybe I was hitting on her. I certainly don’t want her making either conclusion.
Fun read. Not sure how it is pronounced though : )
Thanks Bob.
Cal-eh-pidge-e-in. (Close enough.) Derived from a Greek word originally used to describe a statue of Aphrodite. What a compliment!
The extent to which you can get away with such remarks increases as you get older. Try it on a slot host next time you need a comp to the steak house. (The host probably shouldn’t be male.)