You’d think that my trying on a fancy dress with sparkly shoes (I’m in a wedding) or going to a nice lunch out today would constitute flair. I’m amazed with what doesn’t trip the flair sensor in me. I’m stunned with what does.

I wake up each morning, and I start looking for my flair moment. I can’t wait to discover it. Surprisingly, none of these moments have had anything to do with dresses, shoes, or even food (and I love food: I’m still remembering an amazing carrot cake cupcake I ate).

It’s always the common thing seen in an uncommon way. Flair erupts from the banal, not the sparkly.

While in the Lowe’s parking lot a few hours ago, I saw a man notice a piece of trash in his path. When he bent down to get it, the wind blew it just out of his reach and in front of my car. I braked and watched him scurry after the trash, lean down, nearly reach it, and have the wind swirl it out of reach again.

It felt like I was watching a Charlie Chaplin movie. After two more attempts to hold the piece of trash with his foot, the man finally grasped the paper, held it up in victory, and went to find the trashcan. I rolled down my window and screamed out, “Nice job! You did it!” He held his fist in a cheer, laughing with me. It was a small victory, but so important. Maybe it would be the only battle he’d win today. I had to celebrate it.

Living with flair means I celebrate every small victory. And I mean celebrate (you have to cheer with somebody–hold up a fist and pump it in the air). Cheering with a stranger about picking up trash was flair.

It wasn’t sparkly at all. I didn’t even have to pay for it. In fact, the stuff I want to wear or eat or buy seems like counterfeit flair to me. It’s not the real treasure.

Living with flair means I can find joy in trash because that’s the treasure.

I receive some fantastic excuses about why students miss class. Usually these involve recovering. (Cancun recovery, Birthday party recovery, first day of Spring recovery).

I have an unusual teaching philosophy. I value flair, so if you’re going to miss class, you might as well do it with flair. This means I want the true story, rich with sensory detail. And by all means, use a semicolon somewhere.

Today’s flair moment arrived in the form of an email in which a student describes the scene of his car breaking down: anti-freeze spilling everywhere, profuse smoke, a behemoth truck! (all his wording). I wasn’t mad; I was proud.

I have ten classes left to teach 50 students how to write with flair. Today I reminded them of the romance of the semicolon, the whisper of the parentheses, the shout of the dash. I talked about flavor and tone. Writing with flair means I turn each sentence into a masterpiece.

Living with flair means I turn my life into a masterpiece. It means I find some flair even in my highway breakdowns. Besides, the world needs more true stories of why we aren’t where we’re supposed to be. There’s a story there, ripe with flair, that makes what’s important not what event we missed, but what experience we had while we were trying to get there.

Today I tried to lure a hibernating turtle out from underneath my back porch. I actually devised an elaborate plan. Coaxing turtles into the open isn’t necessarily extraordinary, but why I did it felt like flair.

My elaborate plan involves calling to our turtle and leaving fruit around the yard. I realize this is ridiculous. But still.

I know he’s in there. Last fall, I fed him tiny slices of fruits and vegetables. Then, in a bombardment of freezing rain, winter came early. The turtle burrowed deep somewhere in my yard, and, since we couldn’t find evidence of digging, we assumed he went where it was warmest: under the porch near the house.

Spring is here. Let the turtle emerge!

Today, I circled the yard, looking for that beautiful box turtle. As I walked among all the green shoots in the garden, I knew in my mind that the hunt was completely useless. Our turtle most likely departed for the woods long ago. Chances are slim he’s anywhere near my yard. He might be in another state by now.

But my heart–and the glimmer of childhood left in me–focused my eyes to spy any hint of that brown and yellow mosaic turtle shell. No turtle. But I’ll wake up tomorrow wondering if today’s the day I’ll be drying dishes at the kitchen sink, look out across my back yard, and see him lumbering towards the apple slice I’ve left for him.

I’ll circle the yard tomorrow, too. It’s good for my soul.

Living with flair means I hunt, despite the odds, for what might be.

Sometimes flair bursts into our lives in obvious forms: a promotion at work, good news from the doctor, a first date, or an unexpected gift. Other times, we consciously create flair. We do something out-of-the-ordinary like take a vacation, enjoy a nice dinner out, or challenge ourselves to try some new sport.

Today, I tried to plan my flair. It involved taking the girls to a beautiful creek. And while the whole morning made us smile as we splashed in a creek collecting rocks, it didn’t create that stop-me-in-my-tracks reflection moment so characteristic of flair.

What did was the split second I decided to thrust my hand out of the car window to feel the breeze as I drove home from the creek. I spread my fingers out, then did that undulating wave-like motion to feel the air flow, and finally, like some large awkward bird, I actually started flapping my arm in the wind. (If you happened to be driving behind me and wondered who that crazy woman was on the road today, yup, that was me.)

Soon, the girls copied me. The older one said, “Are we allowed to do this?” and the little one just said, “Ahhhh! That’s feels nice.” There we were, driving down the road, flapping our arms. Fully alive, fully enjoying the rush of wind on our hands. We couldn’t help but laugh.

Flair does that.

It was a small decision to enjoy the wind with my hand. And it made me think about other tiny gestures of the body. Maybe today I could stop, lay down on the warm grass and turn my face toward the sun. Maybe, no matter how stressed I feel or how trapped I am in a schedule, I could open a window somewhere.

Living with flair means I let my hand enjoy the wind.

Today I’m going to be on the local NPR radio! My “I Believe in Flair” blog won a contest, and so I get to read the entry about Michael Jackson on the air. I’m wearing my pearls. My student today reminded me that it’s radio, not television, so it won’t matter how I look. But still, I put on the pearls. Besides, I’ll know how I’ll look.

I’m going to be on the radio! I’m going to use one more exclamation point.

Here: !

Excitement manifests as exclamation points in my world. Some might say I’m a walking exclamation point.

My daughter’s the same way. I woke up to her asking why the other neighborhood kids’ Easter Bunny hides their Easter baskets. She wanted a hidden Easter Basket, with clues, on Easter morning. She was gesturing with her hands and reenacting the hunt she’d go on to find her basket. She suggested that I write a kind note to the Easter Bunny to explain the new hiding-the-Easter-basket ritual. I agreed.

“And mom,” she said hurriedly, “make sure you use lots of exclamation points.”
“Why?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and trying to shake off a nightmare I had about my high school.
“Because then the Easter Bunny knows how important this is. He will know how much you care about this.”

I thought about how right she is. Exclamation points do signal excitement, passion, flair. In academic writing, we never use them. In fact, my grammar book on writing with flair doesn’t even mention them. It’s almost as if the exclamation point drains out of us as we age. We lose things to be passionate about (perhaps because it’s not sophisticated to be enthusiastic). Sometimes I ask students to make a list of 5 things worth arguing for. Since they have to write rebuttal essays, I encourage them to pick topics that really move them. We are all surprised with how hard this task is. We’ve lost some flair and replaced it with apathy.

Most children exude passion naturally. They learn apathy. On the walk to school, I’ve witnessed some serious throw-downs about which website ranks higher (Club Penguin, Poptropica, or Webkinz). I see kids willing to go to the grave about whether or not it’s pizza or bagels for school lunch. I’ve seen them literally not stop talking for 20 minutes about Legos or Star Wars.

I want to be able to talk about things, with passion, like that.

Living with flair means I encourage the exclamation point. I draw out the passion in others; I ignite it in myself. So I’m really excited to go to the radio station! Did I mention I’m wearing my pearls?

I did something I hate today. But the not-flair morphed into the flair. Let me explain.

Several things tempted to destroy flair possibility today: cleaning dishes, dressing reluctant children, driving to the gym to meet my nemesis (the arc trainer machine), and figuring out what to make for dinner. I don’t enjoy these things. Couldn’t I just do what I want to do today? My impulse tells me to sit on the couch all day, eat chocolate bunnies (have you tried the peanut butter ones?), and play Ms. Pacman.

But I remembered something a wise doctor once told me. You can tame the part of the brain that demands its own way. You don’t have to respond to your impulses. Neuroscience suggests that if we practice doing something we don’t want to do everyday, we can essentially diminish the power of the brain’s pleasure center. We actually feel better, over time, when we do this. By starting with small decisions to do one thing I didn’t want to do, I could gradually become less impulse-driven.

Everyday, I can embrace some not-flair. I could make the bed when I don’t want to. I could do some push-ups. I could scrub a toilet. And in that genius irony that is most of life, the thing I hate could become a source of energy and pleasure. Funny, that brain.

Runners know this. My sister runs miles before I’m even awake; she can run for an hour while I eat at the same pace. That’s some flair (I mean the running, not my eating). My sister always understood the mind game of running. Sure, the body resists. Sure, you don’t want to do it. But then you choose to tie your shoes, greet the day, and run around the block. And before too long, you experience, ironically, pleasure beyond pleasure.

Today I chose to exercise on “the beast.” The arc trainer terrifies me. If you’ve never been on one, it’s an improved, more demanding version of an elliptical machine. 30 minutes on the arc trainer, and I think I’m going to die. I start mentally planning my funeral. I start writing out my will. But today, I remember my doctor’s words. Do one thing you don’t want to do. Suddenly, I’m happy and full of energy. I finish the workout by saying “no” to the impulse to get the heck off that machine and run far, far away from that gym, never to return.

Living with flair today means I do some things I don’t want to do. And I enjoy them because I recognize the value in being less impulse-driven. I know that scrubbing my toilet can be flair. . . if I choose for it to be.

So far, finding daily flair hasn’t been too hard (thank you Michael Jackson, seashells, doughnuts, crab teething rings, and worms), but today seemed profoundly flairless. I walked to school, taught classes, held office hours. All good things, but nothing extraordinary stood out. I did see someone wearing the brightest blue shirt I’ve ever seen–it was practically glowing–and I thought about stopping him, taking a picture, and asking if he minded appearing in my flair blog.

But then, my cell phone rang. My husband was picking me up from campus, and he’d be 15 minutes late. I stood on the curb, wondering what in the world I could do with 15 minutes. What can anyone do with just 15 minutes? It’s exactly the sort of time increment worth wasting away doing absolutely nothing.

Instead, I called my friend (I knew her office was across the street from the coffee shop).

“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said.
“I have 15 minutes,” I said.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“By the coffee shop,” I said.
“I’m coming,” she said.

For exactly 15 minutes, I drank a skinny mocha (I put that in just in case my Weight Watchers friends are reading), sat outside of the coffee shop, and had a wonderful conversation. In 15 minutes, we covered the topics of men, teaching, clothing accessories, children, procrastination, spirituality, over-committing, class presentations, sandwiches, and, finally, my husband’s new glasses.

This friend knows how to create conversation flair. She knows the art of asking great questions to draw me out quickly. I’ve noticed that she asks about my day, but she’ll do so in a way that encourages me to tell a story about it. She’ll say, “tell, me more,” or “what was that like for you,” or “what is that making you think about?”. She’ll mention things she’s observing about my life by saying, “I noticed this about your daughters,” or “you seem to really enjoy this about teaching.” And then I ask questions and make observations of her in return. We laughed together, expressed sadness with each other, and most of all, celebrated our day. We talked deeply, with flair, for 15 minutes, exchanged a quick hug, and then I was off to deal with groceries, grading, play dates, and laundry.

Living with flair means I turn any moment into a worthwhile one. It means spending time building relationships through meaningful conversation whether I have 15 minutes or 15 hours. Deliberate questions, connecting deeply. That’s flair.

On the day marking a triumphant entry of a King into Jerusalem, this Palm Sunday started out drizzly and bitter cold. Rain in the forecast again. As I sat behind the registration table in the foyer of my church, welcoming families and their children, I noticed the palm branches limply splayed on a bench nearby.

Not so joyful of a Sunday, I thought. Even the palm branches can’t find anything to be excited about. Nevertheless, I greeted each child and asked how her or she was doing. Most said, “Fine, thank you,” and moved on. But one little boy, maybe nine years old, leaned over my table, his hands in excited little fists. “I’m doing awesome!” He smiled so big, squishing his freckles into one another.

Since I don’t hear that response very often, unless it involves a Disney vacation, I asked him what made him so happy on such a depressing, rainy day.

“I love the rain! I love the rain because it makes the worms come out, and then I can catch them!” He continued to smile and he even jumped up and down in anticipation. And then, before I could say another word, he turned and ran towards his family, leaving behind a trail of flair.

As he left, I thought about finding flair in the inconvenient, bitter cold rain. Come to think of it, most of life seems inconvenient and bitter. Our plans change. Our dreams die. We get sick. Loved ones pass away. Natural disasters strike nations. Children suffer. We suffer. Life doesn’t often give us the luxury of living with flair in the midst of suffering.

But this little boy somehow saw past the rain. He knew that bad weather “makes the worms come out.” Living with flair means I think beyond the inconvenient circumstance or the suffering to what it might make “come out.” What beauty, what compassion, what goodness, what secret treasure? I can dread the rain, or I can dig deep into it, find the joy, and let in squiggle across my palm.