IN MY CONTINUING QUEST to educate the not-so-squalid masses of the Orange
County vicinity, I have decided to fall back upon one of my more dependable areas of
expertise: modern foreign languages.
As Americans we are trained from birth to believe that English is all we need to get by
in life. And while that is true, the many foreign languages still spoken by the less
sophisticated in obscure corners of the globe do provide some educationally
entertaining tidbits to keep us occupied before globalization brings us an entirely
English-only universe.
My brother-in-law said it was kind of sad that he spent the past football season in
schadenfreude — but he did anyway. (Schadenfreude, for those of you unversed in the
Teutonic tongues, is a German word for finding joy in the misfortune of others.) In the
midst of a woeful football season for his Tar Heels, he found solace in the many close
losses and game-ending collapses of the NC State Wolfpack team.
I was not surprised at his schadenfreude; I was surprised that he knew the word.
Perhaps, I shouldn’t have been since he is a graduate of the world-renown University
of North Carolina, but I was because I knew that the only foreign language he took was
Portuguese — the then-preferred language of study for the UNC football team (being
rated on the scale of linguistic difficulty as Spanish Lite). Anyway, schadenfreude is our
first word of the day.
The next is the Greek term hubris. According to its modern usage, hubris is
exaggerated pride or self-confidence. You’ve heard the expression “everybody loves a
winner.” Well, briefly, maybe. Sometimes very briefly. (Consider the fifteen minutes of
love the 2006 national champion Maryland Terrapin women’s basketball team got.)
Mostly, everybody hates a winner. Don’t believe me? Ask the New York Yankees, the
Dallas Cowboys, or the Tar Heel men’s basketball team. ABC fans have been around
for quite a while. (ABC standing for “Anybody But Carolina.” A sentiment immortalized
in the bumper sticker: “My Two Teams are State and Whoever’s Playing Carolina.”) The
problem is the perception by the vanquished that the regular victors over them are
haughty, prideful, and therefore displaying hubris. (Which they usually are.)
Despite all its success, Duke has not taken on its parallel ABD mantle well. It just
doesn’t seem to fit comfortably. They can’t even handle teams celebrating their
victories over Duke. For example, the Duke men’s basketball fans were not happy
when the Florida State players danced around the floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium
after defeating the Blue Devils in January, poking out their jerseys at the crowd.
Crazies, if I may be so familiar in calling you that, don’t be sad when opposing teams
celebrate after defeating your team. Understand that you want opponents saying, as
Virginia Tech guard Jamon Gordon said in January, “To beat Duke in Cameron, that’s
one of the sweetest things you can do.” When you should be sad is when they don’t —
because it ain’t worth celebrating about.
However, if the Seminole roundballers continued to win and puff themselves up about it
(like their football team used to do), we will all start hating on them, because, now
you’re catching on, they will be displaying . . . hubris.
I am, generally, a uniter not a divider. When it comes to contests outside the ACC, I am
a conference loyalist. During the ACC-Big Ten Not Quite a Challenge, I always pull for
every ACC team (with the exception of remaining mostly neutral when my Wisconsin
Badgers play). Likewise, when the national tournaments start (NIT or NCAA, men or
women), I pull for conference teams, mostly because every time they win it makes my
Heels look better, whatever its record is against them.
I am not the kind of fan who wishes pain on the fans of other teams, even those of my
chief rivals. I wouldn’t just pull against Duke for “pulling against” sake. Instead, in the
process of viewing a game, I let myself flow to the team with which I hold a natural
affinity.
During the recent March Madness, in doing so, I discovered my great commonality with
Virginia Commonwealth University, recalling my roots as a native of that great state and
realizing, in an epiphany, that their ram is our ram’s brother and that we are thus
bonded together with their supporters as soul mates. So, it was not with
schadenfreude but, with our final and French phrase of the day, joie de vivre, the joy of
life, that I exclaimed, “Go Rams!”
Gary D. Gaddy majored in the modern foreign language of German at Furman
University, graduating a couple of hundredths of a point short of magna cum laude,
which is Latin for “almost pretty hot stuff,” qualifying him to work as a waiter at Das
Schnitzel Haus, though he never did.
A version of this article was published in the Chapel Hill Herald Thursday June 21,
2007. Copyright 2007 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 