scott spinelli

I participate in online dating.

In doing so, you come across all sorts of pictures and one-liners and questions. Men and women fill out profiles that ask questions about their preferences in any number of ways and the answers are pretty wide-ranging.

One thing you will not see on anyone’s profile is that their “Happy Place” is waiting in a line. Or that “you should message them if…” you love waiting in lines. Or that “something people find hard to believe about them…” is that their favorite thing to do is wait in a line.

No one likes lines. We all fucking hate them. Yet somehow, there is a decent segment of the population that is more OK with them than the rest of us.

Me personally? I’d rather go without than wait on the line. It’s one of the main reasons I enjoy working odd hours: no one is around when I need to do shit, thus, no lines.

These people that get up early to wait in a line for hours to get the newest donut/crepe/bagel/sour patch kid flavor… get the fuck out of here.

So the idea of being able to get that thing, whatever it is, that you know typically has a line without having to actually wait on one feels like you’ve won the lottery. It honestly doesn’t even matter if you’ve got anything else to do. The rest of your day is irrelevant: what matters is that you don’t have to spend it waiting in a line.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling?: Being in a short line, thinking you’ve got it made, only to be behind someone that causes any number of the following issues that delay the process: paying with a check, causing a fuss about a coupon, asking for a manager, asking for something behind the counter, returning something, causing a fuss about a credit card issue.

For some reason, when I was a kid I started a collection of Hard Rock Cafe pins.

To this day, I’m not quite sure how or why this began.

Regardless of the answer to either of those questions, it was a foolish collection to start because it’s almost impossible to finish. There’s a seemingly endless amount of those restaurants and there was no way on God’s earth I was ever even coming close grabbing them all. Hell, if it was just a collection of Hard Rock pins from the USA, I’d likely never finish that.

This is all to say that this is the type of collection I’m talking about. Finishing a collection that takes time and money and effort and more time and more fucking time. Like anything else, the effort makes the reward sweeter.

I’m not sure that I collect anything else that could be considered part of a series, so this feeling has likely passed me by. But that doesn’t mean it has for the rest of you.

So go out there, hoarders among us, and keep collecting.

Eventually when you die, your progeny will have to throw away your “hard work” but until then… keep it up. It means something to you, if nothing else.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling? That moment when you realize you spent tons of money and time on a collection you’ll not only never finish but wouldn’t know what to do with even if you did.

What a fleeting feeling this is, no? How quickly it evaporates and the difference between being in the pocket of this one and just outside it with no chance to recover is almost impossible to tell in the moment.

The true value of leaving on a high note doesn’t measure up in all groups. Generally speaking, if you’re the alpha in the group it typically isn’t a big deal for you to have that ‘on top’ moment. You know you’re gonna get the rock passed back to you again, the coach is going to draw up the shot for you regardless of how it all goes down.

But let’s say you’re at a work meeting wherein you’re one of the lowest ranking people in the room… or, despite being in your 30s and being well past caring about how cool someone is, there’s still that guy or girl you want to impress in a non sexual way… or, you know, any dating situation.

In any of those, this conversational joy can arise.

Unlike most of the feelings on this list and particularly those located higher on the list, the greatness of this idea isn’t just how rare it is but rather how quickly you can dance into the exact polar opposite of the feeling and how bad that can be.

It’s truly a matter of timing. One more joke, one more off-color comment, one more anything really and you could lose the momentum.

For someone like me, with a tendency to drone on and on and an inability to self-censor, it’s far easier for me to blow way past the line and never leave on a high note. Greed kicks in and you start believing your own press clippings, that if you could get to this one high note, of course you can do it again and again.

And to be clear, there are those silver-tongued enough among us out there that can dance with the devil in the pale of the moonlight. But, for the rest of us, the pocket is small.

You get in, you get out.

A handful of years ago, I had my wisdom teeth taken out.

All four, clean sweep, right at once.

I was having some irritation, knew they’d need to come out eventually and decided to do it before it got any worse.

The actual surgery and recovery from said surgery wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. A day and a half later I was totally fine and basically pain-free. I assumed, incorrectly, that this was the end of the story.

Unfortunately, a small side effect of the removal of those teeth was that there seems to have been some shifting that took place, ever so slightly, in the back of my mouth.

The impact of said shifting?

Every single time I eat anything, if I’m chewing on the right side of my mouth which I eventually will wind up doing, I get an enormous piece of food wedged right in there.

It happens literally every meal, I cannot avoid it. At this point, I’m used to it and have floss in multiple locations (backpack, desk at work, car, home).

But sometimes I’m nowhere near any of these safety zones. Sometimes, I have to wait hours until I am comfortably within distance of floss.

That piece of pulled pork or wedge of carrot or (honestly anything, because after a while, it’s all irritating) has been grinding away at me for hours, and finally, with one easy swoop I get to feel total relief.

I honestly even like looking at the chunk on the floss before I rinse it down the drain. There’s some weird conqueror-conqueree-type-shit going on there, can’t explain it.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling?: The interminable wait between that bite and that floss.

I debated how high or low to put this feeling for a while. There was a significant time when I wasn’t even sure if it should be on the list.

How often do you get recognized in public for something you do? And if you do get recognized often, do you even like it? Isn’t it just commonplace or irritating at a certain point?

I don’t have the answer to any of these questions and that’s because I am never, at least not any longer, recognized for anything in public.

The reason this feeling made the list and why it made it this high (or low) is because there was a time when it happened to me and it was fucking amazing.

In college, I wrote a humor column for the daily school newspaper. I only wrote it for a year and it would come out once a week. This was back in 2007 and 2008, before the meteoric rise of smart phones and back when people would actually read newspapers to distract themselves from having to pay attention in class.

As a side note, what I just said feels positively prehistoric at this point. Keep in mind, we all had phones and we all had computers. But, very few of us had smart phones and even those that did barely used them in the way we do today–mostly because the devices couldn’t even remotely handle the workload. This was just 10 years ago.

So yeah, people read the columns and this made me something like an E-list celebrity around campus for those few months. Every so often someone would come up to me and tell me they read it. It happened at parties, at the bar, in class.

I can say all of this without fear of looking like a douche because it was 10 years ago and who the fuck cares at this point, right? It’s not like I still think I am the man. But back then? You couldn’t tell me shit.

The idea that this rinky-dink little column I was scratching out in my room once a week was being read by a bunch of people I’d never met before and enjoyed by those same people to the point that they wanted to tell me so when they’d see me…man, it was too much to wrap my mind around.

For someone that’s never been and never will be famous in any way, shape or form, it was cool to think that someone out there enjoyed what you were producing.

It’s a pretty cool feeling, even for something as obviously insignificant as a humor column in a college newspaper.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling?: The person coming up to you to say that you fucking suck. That also happened.

 

They say that the journey is more important than the destination.

I’m not sure that’s entirely true in every situation, but in the case of the road trip I’m fairly confident in saying that the journey is, at the very least, equal in value to the destination.

A handful of years back, my roommate and I would go on mini-road trips during the summer to various baseball stadiums. One year we hit up Toronto. Another year we took in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The only rules were home games and seven hours or fewer of traveling (each way, not combined).

In both cases, the destinations were really amazing (I mean, as amazing as Cleveland can be, sure). It was really fun to get to see those ballparks, to explore those cities, to travel.

But, for me, the definite highlight was the journey. There’s so many parts to the road trip that are fun–the random stops along the way, the radio stations you pick up, the music you bump–but easily the best part is the beginning.

You’ve loaded all your shit into the car, you’ve got your snacks and your gear and your waters. If there’s a God in this world, the sun is shining and the sky is clear. You lower your windows, slightly put on the AC, turn on the navigation and crank the fuck out of your music.

Carefree, as a descriptor of the feeling you have at this moment, isn’t a carefree-enough term. It’s beyond that. It’s so devoid of concern for anything other than absolute fun and total enjoyment that you’re in a state of pure bliss.

That’s what starting a road trip feels like.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling?: Getting in the car for the ride back to Hoboken from Pittsburgh. Giddy up.

 

Most of my college friends do not live in the area.

Somehow, despite having gone to college in New York state at a school that sends primarily from the Tri-State area, all but one of my friends live elsewhere.

Chicago, Vermont, South Carolina, the greater Boston area, Florida. They’re fucking everywhere but here.

As such, on the rare occasions when any of them decide to leave their homes and get onto a plane or bus and visit New York–and as a by-product, visit me–I’m fucking elated.

I suppose that is what makes it such a great feeling, no? If they lived close and visited often, it’d become commonplace.

Either way, the anticipation of the arrival and the actual arrival are my two favorite parts.

You know this person is coming for a good month or so, but in the days leading up you’re as excited as you’ve been in a while. Finally, something to distract you from the monotony of your every day life. Finally, you get to share your boring shit with your friend. Thank the lord.

Of course, the actual arrival… the first hug or pound or high-five or whatever your pleasure… that’s pure joy as well. It’s been months or more since you’ve seen this person–that release of happiness into a greeting is unlike many others.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling?: Your friend is visiting and they didn’t tell you they’re bringing along their girlfriend or boyfriend or wife or husband. Of course, you don’t really like this person but beyond that the weekend is irrevocably changed and there’s no way you can explain that to your friend without sounding like a jerkoff.

I put the qualifier in there because buying new tires isn’t exactly fun.

Also, before we get started here, a bit of a programming note: you may have noticed that we’re finally going in numerical order. That’s because the first 200+ feelings are done and we’re now down to, essentially, the remaining top 40. From here on out, we’ll be plugging in the holes in the list until we get to number one.

OK, so here’s the story for this one:

When I was younger, all I wanted for Hannukah/Christmas/my birthday this one year was an Antoine Walker authentic jersey. For those of you not in the know, here’s a few basic facts about that previous statement:

1. Growing up, we celebrated both as my mom and dad’s sides of the family were Jewish and Catholic respectively.
2. Antoine Walker was a player for the Boston Celtics.
3. I am not a fan of the Boston Celtics.
4. Antoine Walker shot an inordinate amount of three pointers and often did eccentric shimmy-like dances on the court after making some of those shots.
5. He was a wildly inefficient player and there is no real reason why I should’ve ever been a fan of his, on any level.
6. Authentic jerseys, as opposed to the replicas or swingmans, cost about $150-200.

My parents outright refused to buy me this jersey. There literally was no discussion about it. For the longest time, I hoped against all odds that they were playing possum and that one of those wrapped boxes would actually contain an Antoine Walker jersey.

Their reason was that it was simply too much money to spend on one item, specifically a player’s jersey. In retrospect, they were right to some degree–no 11-year old needs a $150 jersey he’ll wear, max, 7 times. It was completely out of whack. But of course, I didn’t understand that. I tried to reason with them, saying they didn’t need to get me anything else. They weren’t having it.

I mention all this because growing up in this household, I was sort of indoctrinated not to be buying frivolous shit for myself that was unnecessarily expensive. I should note here, the total amount of money my parents would spend on gifts for me was far greater than $150… it wasn’t the total they objected to, but rather the amount for the individual item.

Now, as a semi-adult with semi-adult money and semi-discretional spending powers, I sometimes find myself in the rare but fun area of getting to buy myself something I really want that’s pretty expensive.

Of course, this doesn’t happen often because I generally tend to like plain clothes, plain shit and normal food. However, when I get around to buying a new computer to replace my current one (it’s still soldiering on, basically rock solid since 2009), I know I’ll get that feeling again.

First it starts out with a bit of dread… the nerves of childhood kicking in that I’m spending over a thousand dollars on something. Quickly though, it’s replaced by that feeling of shiny newness that washes over you when you take the thing home.

Like so many feelings from here on out, it’s only great because it’s rare. I suppose the richer you become and more accustomed to buying expensive shit, the less fun and more mundane it becomes.

Seeing as how that future likely isn’t mine, I’ll continue to enjoy it when I get it.

Polar Opposite of this Feeling?: Seeing your credit card statement the next month.

 

Just a few days ago, walking around Brooklyn while listening to music and navigating my way to a pizza place to meet a friend for a quick slice, my phone decided it had had enough.

From 51% to 24% to dead battery in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes. No warning, no explanation. Just dead.

One minute you’re listening to a song, the next it sort of slowly fades out and your phone has passed away.

Now, beyond the obvious annoyances of this happening, I actually did need my phone that night (or so I thought at the time) because I was attending an event for which my ticket was electronically stored on my phone.

As this all happened, I was crossing the street. The music slowed down and went off and having had this happen to me a number of times recently, I knew what was going down.

I took the phone out of my pocket to confirm my suspicions and with little recourse, muttered a few curse words and continued on my way.

HERE is where I’d loved to have been able to smash my phone into a million fucking pieces. I wanted to hurl it as hard as I could into the gutter, stomp on it with my boot, hope a truck backed over it a million times in the middle of the road. There was no shortage of joy I’d have felt had I been able to destroy that piece of fucking trash.

Of course, I didn’t. And we often don’t. Why? Because (and this is in lieu of the Polar Opposite) the immediate realization after the fun of smashing is that you now have to go through the living hell that is buying a new one.

But supposing we were all millionaires with personal assistants that could remedy that particular element of this situation, would you love to be able to smash your iPhone every time it pulled a fucking stunt like that?

I know I would.