Pompatus

Per the Oxford English Dictionary:

Noun

/ˈpɒmpətəs/

One who acts with pomp, splendor.

Last year for Valentine’s Day, my six-year-old son and I went to pick out flowers for my wife. As soon as we walked into the florist’s door, my son immediately zeroed in on a small, flowering potted plant. He snatched it up and confidently said, “Mama will find these quite beautiful.” I agreed as he trotted off toward the sales counter with his prize.

I hung back a bit, milling around the refrigerated case where the nice roses were kept. Because I know that my wife likes multi-colored arrangements, I was considering a dozen roses in assorted colors. My wingman, however, had different plans. He pointed a skinny finger at a large planter stuffed to the gills with red roses, and assuredly said, “Get the red roses.”

“Why, red ones?” I asked. “I happen to know that Mama loves different colors.”

“No,” he insisted, “you need to get red roses because red means LOOOOVVVVVEEEE.”

He even put a full-body swoon into the word, “love,” so that it sounded more like, “luuuuuuvvvvvv.”

Even though a guy might know what his wife likes, he listens to his wingman in these kinds of situations. I mean, that’s why you have a wingman in the first place, right? So, I went with a dozen of their finest red roses. Once we got the counter, he said to the female clerk, “Your flowers are quite beautiful.” The clerk laughed, wrinkled her nose and asked me, “Did he just say ‘quite beautiful?'”

“Um, yep…” [I decided not to mention that he was being raised by a pair of super-nerd book editors and that this kind of verbiage is par for the course.]

Once our flowers were all wrapped up in festive red tissue paper, the youngest Kughen insisted on carrying the roses—you know, the ones I planned to give to my bride. So, I obliged saying, “Now, be careful with those” as I handed them to him.

What’s the first he did with them? He makes several savage swashbuckler slashes with them, of course, causing the guy behind us to break out laughing. I am sure I looked silly trying to stop my young Jedi from shredding my roses while not damaging the roses in the process. Thankfully, the roses were wrapped pretty tightly and I got to him before he used them to cut down a foe or to destroy other arrangements in nearby glass vases.

The nice lady at the counter looked at me with apologetic eyes and said, “Good luck with that.”

I responded with a sheepish grin and then hustled my young Padawan learner and our prizes out to the car.

Later after we returned home and gave our flowers to my wife, I hugged and kissed her. From a few feet away, we heard, “Seriously. In front of me? No kissing!” I turned to look at him and he was making a face of someone who had just licked a wet dog.

I guess “luuuuuuvvvvvv” means giving flowers, but it stops at the water’s edge when beyond the water’s edge is where Mama and Papa are spotted kissing, or have any additional contact beyond a high five or a fist bump.

Of course, a good captain knows when to ignore the advice of his wingman and to carry on.