55/100

The world is full of bragging. And trumpet players are the worst. (See, even this is a brag. I am distinguishing myself from all other trumpeters by claiming to be aware of and immune to their great flaw.) Everyone has a story about the time that they played with such-and-such an important person, or can relate how their performance went of such-and-such a piece. ("My, weren't you young to be performing that? You must have been quite precocious!") Even the stories of missed notes are brags. (I was playing Zarathustra, and the first call went great, but then I totally cacked the note on the lower call!)

Talking about food too quickly turns into a comparison of who knows the most about techniques, flavors, and wine pairings. Talking about exercise inevitably ends with a discussion of how many miles you run and how fast you run them. (Or, for the more gymnasium-oriented, how much you can lift, I suppose.) Talking about politics or religion is often little more than an excuse to show off your most impressive sounding sound-bites or arcane statistics. Even writing a blog can be a tempting vehicle for showing off your fancy-pants English vocabulary by using words like "arcane."

We show off vehicles, boots, clothes, bodies, marriages, computers, deodorant brands, houses, repair know-how, shopping savvy...pretty much everything.

And I hope that I, who am at heart an unregenerate braggart, keep a lid on my worst and most braggadocios impulses most of the time.

But this is worth a little bit of bragging:

J and I have completely paid off our student loans.