March 2006

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Carolina's Men's team lost this afternoon in the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I didn't expect the team to win the championship, but had hoped they'd make it to the Sweet Sixteen.

Something else I did not expect was the reaction to the game's outcome by one clerk at a local store counter. When another clerk came on duty, she looked at him and asked about the game. Upon hearing Carolina had lost, she started gleefully announcing to all in earshot that she was glad they'd lost.

Note here that she was not saying she was glad the other team had won. That would have been understandable (if a bit dangerous with so many sad Carolina fans standing in front of her), especially had she gone on to announce winning a tournament pool. But no, she was just proclaiming herself glad Carolina had lost.

And those of us in front of the counter were so stunned we didn't know how to respond. So we stood there in silence, wondering if she had anything else outrageous to say. When she next spoke, it was back to strictly business matters. So the rest of us let out our collective breath and chose to let the proclamation go unanswered.

As I stood there waiting my turn, I was thinking of something that had happened a few minutes earlier. The same clerk had been away from the counter, stocking merchandise. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she seemed to be having a great deal of trouble seeing the labels on the items she had in her hands, turning both the item and her head to odd angles as though to position her eyeglasses in just the right spot to read the necessary information.

She grimaced every time she had to do the odd-angles positioning. I don't know if it was bothering her head or neck to deal with the positioning, or if she had some other physical problem.

If her glee at Carolina's loss was somehow related to the bleakness of her own circumstance this day, I can only hope that she gets a different perspective on both her unhappiness and on how her chosen method of coping with it affected those around her.

Otherwise she may be totally miserable one of these days when Carolina wins again.