Thought I Was Stupid

Friday I went to Florence to see my grandmother. She is not doing well. Honestly I think if you asked her, she might not know she saw me. It left me in a semi-odd mood when I headed back to Huntersville on Saturday afternoon in order to prepare for my friend Brandon’s birthday festivities. It didn’t help that there was a lack of plan for those events, and I hate not knowing what is going on. I like a plan, and I know I need to work on being more relaxed. I did know the general plan was to go to some places on exit 28 and then end the evening in Birkdale. Because of that I volunteered to be DD.

We went and had dinner at a place called Mac’s - it wasn’t bad. Then we went to Crave. One drink at each location to keep me sober. Well, we ended up with more people than would fit in my car, so I drove Andrew’s car. Then, we had someone show up with a friend so when we met Brandon at dinner we had more people than would fit in Andrew’s car. Making it over to Crave from dinner was OK because it was close proximity, but we were unclear as to how we would get back to Birkdale. Steve and Amanda were ready to head back though, so it worked out OK and I just made 2 trips back to the village.

After drop off #1 everything went off, and I was already in an odd mood and Brett & Troy had picked up on it. I really wanted nothing more than to be back in Birkdale on the sofa with he who must not be named drinking and watching a movie. Anyway, in conveying that desire (although not that explicitly) I used the word “commiserate.” As in, well...lets go to your place, relax, get drunk, and commiserate together. I guess the word “together” might not have been needed in the sentence.

The night ended up being OK. I had a good time and Brandon had a nice birthday. I didn’t get my vegging out though. :-(

The next day I was talking to “person” though and he asked me about the word “commiserate” and the definition. I suddenly felt really stupid because I had clearly used a) a fake word, or b) a real word improperly. And, he has complimented me for being smart, so I was feeling like a real winner.

It seemed appropriate to use my strawberry to access google in order to pull the definition of the word (we were riding the car together). As in - define: commiserate. Well, google returned:

Did you mean: define: commensurate

Hmmm, I guess I spelled it wrong. But the definition was:

Definitions of commensurate on the Web:
* corresponding in size or degree or extent; “pay should be commensurate with the time worked”
* proportionate; of a similar measurable standard

Crap, maybe I do really have the word wrong. So, we tried several spellings and kept getting the same thing. Double crap...I really was wrong. Maybe it is something with google mobile.

The next day at work I even talked to Matt about it - word guru he is. He thought my word, and its definition seemed swell, but didn’t know why it was not coming back in definitions. I think I had asked something like...

So, “commiserate” is a word right? As in meaning - we will commiserate - share in a bad mood or crappiness together. “I had a shitty day, so did you, lets commiserate.” If it is, then why isn’t google defining it?

After that conversation I sort of put it out of my mind and hoped he had as well. But then, last night - around midnight I got an e-mail with the subject “You were right of course” - And within it I read...

com-mis-er-ate Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuh-miz-uh-reyt]
1. to feel or express sorrow or sympathy for; empathize with; pity.
2. to sympathize (usually fol. by with): They commiserated with him over the loss of his job.

I was pleased to know I was not stupid, and had used the word properly. I am apparently just a bad google definition searcher.