I was looking at my description of my former publisher, Tom Cooper. All I had was “sweet and daffy.” It nagged at me. Then I remembered: the Rule of Three, an ancient writing device that explains both “A Priest, a Minister and a Rabbi walk into a bar,” and the phrase “tall, dark and handsome.” So, I added “lanky.”

I remember when I first learned about the rule, during the 1960s, when I was an avid reader of Time Magazine, a very heavily stylized weekly newsmagazine co-founded by Yalie Henry Luce, who insisted that everyone’s name be preceded by three adjectives. I would call him “wacky, wealthy, classically-educated Henry Luce.” He also found a constant march of simple sentences boring, so, in the immortal words of parodist Wolcott Gibbs: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind,” a perfect example of Timespeak.

I realize now that I missed a trick in the summer of 1975, when I was on the overnight desk at UPI Boston, writing the Red Sox summary for the New England radio wire. Luis Tiant never recorded an appearance without being referred to by dozens of New England radio station announcers (reading my script) as “cigar-chomping right-hander Luis Tiant.” If only I’d though of adding “Cuban.”

So, I decided that I am plump, upbeat, chatty Paul Schindler. Perhaps if I, too, had been a Yalie and not an MIT grad, I might say plump, ebullient, chatty. What three adjectives would you use for yourself? Let me know by clicking this email link, or commenting.