On the Wing by Eric Kraft

I—”
    â€œHe’s just kidding,” said Albertine. “He’s a card-carrying member of the Heartsick American Humorists’ Association.”
    â€œOh,” the man said, with a slackness in his tone that said, simply but unmistakably, that however highly the rest of the world might esteem such status, he was unimpressed. “Well, the term egotist seems to have been coined by Joseph Addison, the essayist, to identify what he considered to be an annoying rhetorical style characterized by the too-frequent use of the first-person singular pronoun.”
    â€œAye-yi-yi,” I said.
    â€œI always tell myself to use the t to remind myself of the difference between egoist and egotist, ” the woman informed us. “Someone told me to do that long ago—but for the life of me I can’t remember who it was.”
    â€œIt was I, my dear,” said the man.
    â€œWas it? I don’t think it was.”
    â€œI assure you that it was.”
    â€œRegardless of who it was who told me to do so—and I doubt very much that it was you—I remind myself that the t stands for talking. ”
    â€œI think you’re getting ahead of yourself, dear,” said her companion, with the appearance of good humor. “I think we’ve got to begin with a couple of definitions.”
    â€œDo you,” she said icily.
    â€œYes, I do,” he snapped. Then, to us, or perhaps to the room at large, he announced, “An egoist is a person who is guided by the principle of ‘me first.’”
    â€œI find that it applies in every circumstance, at every turn, whenever a choice must be made,” the woman added.
    â€œThat was implied in my definition,” her companion asserted.
    â€œI had no way of knowing that,” she asserted right back at him. To us she said, “I feel that I must point out that the principle of ‘me first’ is not quite the same as ‘me only.’”
    â€œOf course not,” the man said with a sneer. “‘Me only’ is the solipsist’s principle. For the solipsist, the notion of ‘me first’ is utterly superfluous.”
    â€œWhen you talk, all I hear is blah, blah, blah,” she said.
    â€œI wonder where the fault lies,” he growled.
    â€œWhat’s your other definition?” asked Albertine with the subtlety of a diplomatist. “The definition of egotist? ”
    â€œAn egotist is someone who is always talking about himself,” said the woman.
    â€œOr herself,” the man suggested.
    â€œI always remember the t, ” the woman said, almost wistfully, as if she were recalling a particularly poignant moment when she had used the t to remind herself of the difference between the words, sometime in the past, in other circumstances, in other company.
    â€œI think a person can be an egoist and not realize it, don’t you?” asked Albertine, intending a kindness, I think, drawing the woman back into our foursome. “There’s a kind of egoism that is unthinking or passive.”
    â€œYes,” I said, doing my bit. “There’s a kind of egoist who doesn’t even consider other people and their needs, feelings, and desires.”
    â€œIn fact,” said Albertine, “I think that that kind of neglectful egoism is the most widespread, and the people who practice it are the egoists who are least likely to recognize their egoism.”
    â€œCould be,” admitted the man. “Or else they’re dissembling; they aren’t quite assertive enough to put themselves first, but they are egoistical enough to be blind to the needs and rights of others—or deliberately to blind themselves to those needs and rights.”
    I began to wish that they would go away. I’d had enough of them. I wanted to be alone with Albertine. We two. Just we two. We two against the world, the whole yammering, battering, self-centered world.
    â€œBut if