Starts with E

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“He’s um… he’s… oh, what’s that word?”
“What does it mean?”
“Oh, you know - he buys nice clothes and cares about how he looks, and he goes out dancing…”
“Superficial.”
“No, no. Anyway, it starts with an E.”
“Elegant. Effervescent. Egalitarian.”
“No. It’s like - you know, dancing and nice shoes and um, people from Brazil.”
“Exuberant?”
“No.”

Eventually, we settled on “flamboyant”, even though it didn’t start with an E (but it had an E in it, which we decided was the important bit). Later that evening, I described something as “extravagant praise”. “EXTRAVAGANT!” he shouted. “That was the word. See, it does start with an E.”

It’s like having my own personal, very vague crossword puzzle. I am less tenacious - while “thing” is a major word in my vocabulary, I generally flap my hands around while saying, “Er, er, um” and conclude with, “you know what I mean”, and hope that people can fill in the gaps in the sentences. I have also noticed recently that I tend to trail off in the middle of sentences, either because I’m lost track of what I was saying, or I’ve forgotten a word and ending up vaguely waving my hands instead of speaking. I’m fairly sure I have my father to thank for that collection of genes.

I employ this a bit at work when I’m feeling out of my depth, mostly because people generally finish off the sentences for you. “Yes, I feel it has a similarity with that High Court decision…” I say, and they leap in helpfully with the actual name of the case. This goes into my bad habit file along with nodding seriously while someone uses a phrase I have absolutely no familiarity with and then Googling it, rather than just asking them what it means. Let’s hope they’re not checking up on my Google history.

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