"CHARMING"

"Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain..." (from Proverbs 31:30 New King James Version)

Not long ago, a friend of mine mentioned to me that he'd met a guy I know. In describing the guy, my friend said, "He was charming". Over the next couple of days, I found myself thinking of that description over and over again in my mind: "He was charming". One reason I thought about it is that I virtually never use the word "charming" to describe a person or an object. It's not a conscious choice, but I realize I just don't use that term. Another reason I thought of it is that the guy he was describing really IS "charming". As I pondered all this, I wondered if "charming" is a positive or a negative trait. I'm sure my friend was using "charming" as a positive description of the guy.

You know, I would never want to be described as "charming". To me, there's something in the term "charming" that says, "too good to be true". A term I DO sometimes use to describe people is "syrupy sweet". My son says, "sappy". My maternal grandfather, Joseph Philip Richard died in 1960, so I did not get to know him well, but my mother often talked about him and his "sayings". He had a bunch of sayings even as Benjamin Franklin did. ONE of his folksy sayings, for example, was "You can always BUY but you can't always SELL." Another was, "NEVER co-sign a loan." Now, the one I'm thinking of for THIS piece is, "Beware of anyone who's 'nicey nice'." Yup, old French Canadian Joseph Philip Richard's term for "charming" was "nicey nice". From what I heard about my mother's father is that he was very "real". He smoked a pipe. He loved Smith Brothers wild cherry cough drops. He was a deeply religious Roman Catholic; he went to mass every day and twice on Sundays, and had enough "Sacred Heart of Jesus" pictures in his room for a Catholic church! He worked hard at the post office, and he did his best to keep up the "three decker" house he owned in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. But one thing Joseph Philip Richard was NOT was "charming".

I'm not charming, either. I can be very funny and very humorous. I can be a very entertaining storyteller. I'm a good teacher and good speaker. I have quite a knowledge of trivia. I like some people and I'm not always crazy about others, although I TRY to "love thy neighbor" as the Good Book says. But I'm not charming.

I looked up "charming" in several on-line dictionaries. Some definitions of the word were quite positive, but especially at the Miriam-Webster on-line dictionary site, they DID include some negative connotations of the word, and they offered a place for comments. Jesn Losanes Leysa of HOTEL RIO posted this very telling comment about "charming":

"All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others".

Know what? None of my kids would be described as "charming" and I'm kind of glad about that. I hope my grandson Ben grows up to be a very nice guy and a committed Christian, but I honestly hope he's not "charming".