She just blurted out, “There is a very eclectic group of people in this restaurant tonight.”
I was surprised at my wife using the word eclectic and using it in a sentence. Maybe I was jealous because I love to solve cross word puzzles and eclectic would be a great word for a puzzle. Because I am the cross word nut, I am usually the one to come up with strange and fascinating words. Maybe I was surprised because I had no idea what eclectic meant. I had heard the word but I did not have a clue to its meaning.
I commented to my wife that I was surprised with her use of the word and then I asked her what it meant.
“Odd,” she said. “It means odd. There are a lot of odd people here tonight.”
“That’s a great word,” I replied.
She was right. There are always odd people at the Salt & Pepper restaurant and the oddest group there was probably our group. At least I am very sure that other diners looked at us and giggled under their breaths.
One of the reasons I like Salt & Pepper is the other people that go there to dine. The food is good and the service is excellent but I like the people. They are the people that I like to refer to as “salt of the earth” people. They are the normal type of people that make and made this country great. They put on no airs. They do not pretend to be anything but what they are.
I feel like I am one of them.
I feel comfortable.
I don’t feel odd.
However, I guess I could feel eclectic because once we arrived home I had to Google eclectic. The results indicated that eclectic is close to odd but I wouldn’t provide my wife with a win in a Noah Webster contest.
Noah Webster defines eclectic when it used as adjective and when it is used as a noun as follows:
· Adjective: Deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.
· Noun: A person who derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.
So an eclectic person is one who uses a wide range of sources to form his opinions or beliefs. An eclectic person is not an odd person unless one considers it odd to form ideas from different sources.
Therefore, it was not an eclectic crowd at the restaurant. I refuse to call it an odd crowd because as I stated earlier, I was part of the crowd and I adamantly refuse to admit that I am odd.
The problem for me was to figure out where my wife heard eclectic and why she wanted to impress me with her new found knowledge by using it in sentence and also would I bet wise for me to inform her that she was just a wee bit wrong in her usage of the word?
I suspect that she heard the word on MSNBC because that is what she watches on the mind bending tube that we call television. She is deeply into politics. She wakes up and watches MSNBC. She watches MSNBC in bed at night.
I am not into politics. I think all politicians are crazy but I do have my political beliefs and I am very happy with them. It is not necessary for me to boor you with my beliefs. I am very happy to let you believe and vote as you see fit. I will believe and vote as I see fit.
However, my wife tries to get me involved in a political “discussion” on various occasions. Once in a while I will fall for the bait and then regret it. The “discussion” usually leads to several hours of silence between the two of us.
I am not about to accept some of the premises tossed around on MSNBC and she is not about to accept any idea that I may have so why should we go down that road? I am happy to let her believe as she wants. For some reason, the opposite does not hold true.
I have come to the belief that when someone is so adamant in their beliefs that they cannot let another person have any different belief, that person is beginning to go over the Kooky bridge. I sometimes wonder if my wife in her world of politics isn’t somewhere in the middle of that bridge.
So assuming that she learned eclectic and the miss use of eclectic on MSNBC I have chosen to let sleeping kooks lie and keep my non political mouth shut. I am happier that way.
Sgbeatty/dec-2011
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