I didn’t know exulting is one of forms of showing off and maybe a permissible form. Perhaps my understanding of exulting is only limited to children who are joyful.
In the beginning of the 19th paragraph, the author said she didn’t intend to defend herself. She would show off when she thought she should do. Next to the dash, the author used some examples. But why did she use past tense? She wants to indulge her now, but she was showing off in the past. It seems that there is a contradiction.
Then she used three words to describe a thing that most of us want to have ----golden, glowing, and glorious. They all began with the letter “g”. Maybe it is a technique of writing which my teacher had told about in the class. And the author also wanted to emphasize why most of us were in dream of it. In the end of this paragraph, she made a conclusion: Don’t hesitate to exult for it is acceptable.
From paragraph 20 to 22, she gave three instances which happened in our daily life to illustrate what exulting is. But the “tap dance” stopped me. Can tap dance? So it must have the meaning which I am not familiar with. In dictionary, it is “a kind of dance in which the rhythm is marked by the noise of the dancer's shoes on the floor.” Hence this phrase modified how happy did the husband feel.
Then I move to how the author’s mother expressed her exulting. This lovely old lady represents a group of elders. The author used “all”, “announced” and her mother’s words to make a vivid description of an exulting show off. The old lady used three sentences and each is longer and has more meanings than the proceed[previous] one. Obviously, she only wanted to show her first grandson is the most gorgeous.
What about the mother of four? The author used “would have done” in this sentence, so she made an assumption here. And from her “words”, she did it all for show and she is self-important. Thus from here I didn’t agree with the author. I didn’t think this exulting is permissible.
