If You Only Had One Word

I was watching the news the other day about a young man who had been killed. The news reporter was interviewing a neighbor, gathering information.

"He was always polite," the neighbor said.

Polite? That's it?

Of the 165,000 words in Webster's latest dictionary, polite was the best she could come up with?

Now it's possible the neighbor meant this as a huge compliment. The world we live in, after all, is often loud and rude. Or maybe her brain froze when the microphone was thrust in front of her face. I just hope at the end of my life, my friends would have more to say about me than "She was polite."

How about you? If your friends only had one word to describe you, what would that word be?