Ridiculous Spikes of Self-Esteem

Do you ever get a self-esteem boost off of something you know is totally ridiculous? My classic example is the time that I was walking down to get a sandwich for lunch and a homeless guy asked me for money. I gave him my minimal headshake of recognition, to which he responded, "Cool old school Ray-Bans, though." OK, first, why should I get a kick out of getting complimented about my sunglasses? They're a consumer product after all, even if they are cool. Second, this is a homeless guy talking. I'm sure he was nice guy, but he wasn't any particular style guru, that's for sure. Nonetheless, I got a kick out of it. Gave the guy a dollar on my way back from getting lunch.

I had two of these ridiculous spikes of self-esteem this week.

First, on Monday, I had to go out of town on business. It was close enough to drive, so I did, in El Machino (on the day before it went into the shop to get the after-effects of The Big Thump fixed). My route between the location of my work engagement and the freeway took me past the high school in that town. I happened to leave my engagement at about 3 p.m., so I was driving past the high school right when it let out. So I'm driving El Machino (a small, red sports car) past the high school right when hordes of teenage boys are walking down the street. I swear to God, every last one of them stopped to look at the car. This felt good. It also felt ridiculous. Again, we're talking about a consumer product, not anything that I did personally, though I have wanted a sports car since I was rather young, maybe since I watched my first Indy 500 in 1979, when Rick Mears of Bakersfield won for the first time. (In those days, Indy car racing was way more popular than NASCAR. Nonetheless, for some reason that escapes me, the race was not broadcast on TV live. Instead, it was tape-delayed and shown beginning at like 9 p.m., so I would have to stay up late to watch it. I thought it was pretty cool, maybe mostly because I was getting to stay up late. Used to build Indy cars with my Lego's.)

Second, our softball team actually won a game. We have been a team for about two years, have played around 30 games or so and have now won three. Despite our record, we're not terrible (we tell ourselves). During the summer league, we didn't win any games, but five of our seven losses were by a total of seven runs. That sucked. Last night, we played our archrivals, a team from a local Asian food market. We play just death match games against these guys. The first time we played, we had them down by eight runs in the last inning and they then proceeded to score ten. The second time we played them, we had about a ten-run lead and they came roaring back, but we won, getting the last out with their tying run on second and their winning run on first. The third time we played them, they had a two-run lead going into the last inning and we loaded the bases, but couldn't score. Last night, we had a real seesaw game that we ended up winning by two when we scored four runs in the bottom of the last inning.

Man, that felt good. Plus, I got two hits (in four at-bats), including one hard line drive over the shortstop. One of my outs was a fly ball that I think was about as deep a ball as I have ever hit. Plus, I finally got back to playing in the field after the big ankle sprain, which was about seven weeks ago. So this was a very good experience.

My question, though, is why does stuff like teenagers liking your car and winning a meaningless city league softball game give you a jolt of self-esteem? The Muse has these same kinds of experiences (e.g., a neighborhood teenager telling her she has a cool book collection) and can't figure it out either. I mean, we have two great kids, a house, a stinky little dog who loves us (or at least The Muse) and many of the other basic things that make for decent adulthood, but we both get these involuntary kicks out of 15-year-olds' reactions to things we do or have. City league softball, my friends and I play for fun of course, but, man, we were all pretty damn happy to win (and we hadn't even had any beer!). Why do these little things give us a boost? Is it because they're frills and not necessary to day-to-day existence, so, when they're good, they're extra good? (Like having really low expectations for a movie, but having it be quite good? This was my experience with Elf.)

Help me out here. Tell me I'm not crazy. Tell me that at least some of you with unwebbed toes have this same experience.