I remember one time I was playing Euchre, a card game, with family. The best hand you can possibly get is called a "lay-down lone hand." It's a hand that you can just lay down and nobody can possibly beat any of your cards. The perfect hand is when you can do this after going alone, without your partner. It's worth 4 points. It doesn't have to be both jacks with the ace, king and queen of trump but if it is, it is the ultimate hand. I HAD this hand. Everybody passed and trump was turned down. All I had to do when the call got to me was call trump and alone and lay it down. BOOM! 4 points! In a game that goes up to 10 this is the sweetest feeling you can have! So the call GOT to me, I was ready to add some cocky flourish to my lay down and maybe some trash talk when all of a sudden the phone rings. My Mom got up to answer it. She was on the phone, as is her way, for quite a while before returning to the game. It knocked the fun right out of the experience! Oh it was still pretty sweet, but nowhere near the blast it would have been without the wait.
I have needed a word for this feeling a few times in life. One time in Korea I had a girlfriend nicknamed Jeannie. I think her name was Jin Hee. I can't remember exactly because our relationship didn't last for a long time and this story I'm about to tell may have been a harbinger of the doom it was to suffer. She told me she wasn't a fan of flowers. Unless they were hand picked and given to her. I can't remember what day it was or even what season but it was her birthday and it was either spring or fall. It was probably spring because I remember the days being fairly warm. Warm enough to go out, buy some flowers and climb to the top of a little mountain in Yong In where I lived and plant them on the side of the path. In a secret spot that no passer by would notice. I then convinced Jeannie to come visit me in Yong In. She lived in Seoul. The day I planted the flowers and bought her a nice gift and planned an evening with wine, Jeannie and song, (at a local singing room), was quite warm. Warm enough to plant the flowers and know they wouldn't freeze. Jeannie agreed to spend her birthday with me in Yong In. The plan was coming together! The NEXT day, her birthday, was not so warm. In fact it was unseasonably cold. I wondered if my flowers had frozen overnight. But Jeannie was coming some time around noon so I thought they'd be okay.
I met her at the bus depot and as soon as I saw her I lost a bit of the excitement you get when you are about to do something nice for someone. She was wearing nowhere NEAR enough clothing for the weather. I remember the first thing I said was something like, "Is the weather different in Seoul?" Seoul being a 40-minute trip from Yong In, of course it wouldn't be. She just said she was freezing and wanted to get to someplace warm. So I had to do all I could to convince her to go on a hike up Mt. Nogobong, (it's no more than a 20-minute hike). I told her there was a birthday surprise up there for her. I practically had to drag her. But she was not wearing the clothes, or the footwear for a hike. In the end she agreed to wait for me at the bottom while I sprinted up, grabbed the flowers out of the ground, which were frosty and wilted but still not UNbeautiful, ran down and handed them to her with the announcement, "I hand-picked these for you at the top of the mountain." I think she said something like, "Thanks, let's get inside." Not the response I was planning to get out of her. And not the feeling of having done something nice, and if I do say so myself, quite romantic, for a gal I liked a lot. Heightened expectations completely shot down by circumstances.
Is there a word for this? I know the Germans are pretty good at words that describe specific feelings like this. They have a word, "schadenfreude," that means the feeling of joy or pleasure when one sees another fail. The natives of Tierra del Fuego have a very specific word, "mamihlapinatapai," which means to look at each other, each hoping the other will offer to do something which both parties much desire done but which neither is willing to do. Maybe the natives of Tierra del Fuego often bring their cheap friends out to dinner and have this feeling when the check comes. I dunno.
Thursday my brother, Rob had some tickets to the Kiss concert Friday night that he couldn't use. I love Kiss and I knew my brother Jeff liked them too so I offered to take them off Rob's hands. He came to my work and I bought them from him. I texted Jeff and told him he should make me supper that night because I had a surprise for him. I suggested he cook up some cabbage rolls I had in the freezer along with some perogies. He found the cabbage rolls, rotten, in our freezer that is not quite cold enough. So he said he'd make some Hamburger Helper. Meh. It's not cabbage rolls and perogies but at least I'd have supper waiting for me when I got home. Something I haven't had since I can't remember.
7:30 rolls around. I worked from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM that day and was pretty hungry at the end of my shift. However, my relief was nowhere to be seen. We tried and tried to call him but to no avail. Then every person who has ever worked my site was called and either could not be contacted or could not do the shift. By 9:00 it was decided that the mobile guard would sit in for me and I could go home. Jeff had texted me at around 7 telling me supper was ready. It was re-heated Hamburger Helper when I got home. I guess it's better than re-heated cabbage rolls and perogies but geez... And the thrill of handing over a ticket to Kiss just wasn't what I had been looking forward to all day.
Well the concert was spectacular! Kiss put on a show that I don't think many other bands could match. Paul Stanley's voice was cracking a lot and he couldn't sing the songs that well but it was okay. They had just finished their Monster tour and his voice was tired. Calgary was tacked onto the end of the tour because on July 13th, the original Calgary date for Kiss, half the Saddledome was under water with the great floods of '13. So crackly voice or no, Kiss was much appreciated! The plan was to go to the pub just around the corner from my place after the concert. They have a Kiss greatest hits album on their jukebox and I was going to plug the whole thing and have a few beers. I only had one at the concert. So we get to Bonasara's and I show the waitress my Kiss tour T shirt and say, "Guess where WE just came from!" "Oh the Kiss concert. Nice." The place was too busy for her to ask how it was or what songs they played or have the conversation with me I'd hoped for. Also when I got up to put some money in the juke box, I noticed a guy playing the guitar in the bar. He was good but he was no Kiss. It was local musician open mike night. The next few acts were nowhere near as good as the guitar guy and the music was not what I wanted to hear. Then the guy who was sitting next to Jeff at the bar tries to pick a fight with him. "You think you're better than me?" "You're not better than me!" Then he looks at ME. I hadn't said a word to him! He goes, "You too! Have some respect!" He was told to go home. Obviously had too much to drink. So we had a burger and a beer and left. I don't know what was in those burgers but I just came home and hit the hay. I was tired! Hardly "rocking and rolling all night and partying ev-er-ry day!"
Today I wake up at some hour and go to check my phone to see exactly what hour it is, and it's gone. I have looked everywhere but can't find it. I was so busy trying to make sure my very expensive Kiss concert shirts got home safely, I guess I forgot about my phone. On the bright side, I had wanted to take pictures and vids during the concert by my cam phone was no good. Every pic was blurry and in the darkened stadium it was useless for pics or vids. So at least I got THAT goin' for me. Wonder what the word for that feeling is...
So, I think I'm going to make up a few words here. When you try to do something nice for someone and are subverted by circumstances I'm going to call that "punicharity." No good deed goes unpunished. And when you try to find something good from a disaster like, "I lost my legs in Nam but just look at the musculature in my arms!" "At least re-heated Hamburger Helper is better than re-heated cabbage rolls and perogies!" "The flowers weren't UNpretty!" "Well at least I didn't lose too many great pics of the concert along with that crappy cam phone!" I'll call that, "negapositivity." And for those of you who will read this, laugh at my misfortune, (and that's okay. I don't mind.), and take my negapositivity with a grain of salt when I say that the Kiss concert was a total blast even though I can't post any of the pics I took of it here, I'll call you punicharitynegapositivityschadenfreuders.
But anyhoo, the Kiss concert was a total blast! I just wish I could post some of the pics I took on my phone cam here! Who knows, maybe it'll turn up. <---- What about that right there? What's the word? Thinking wishfully in the face of great odds against, hmmmm... "Canuckfanity?"
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