The Group Grump

Someone who was writing an article on "self-motivation" called me the other day. In my waxing and waning about fun as the great self-motivator, I found myself saying:

"You know how, despite how light-hearted or self-fulfilled you're feeling, when you meet someone who just happens for that moment to be grumpy, you start getting grumpy too? Well, that's what happens in almost every workplace or schoolhouse or hallway or gathering place in the world. You get this Group Grump going, everybody infecting everybody else until the whole place is filled with pointless and general grumpiness."

Group Grump.

You have to admit, this is a familiar phenomenon. And it's fun to say it: "group grump." And it could actually, just by the sheer power of its silly-soundingness, defuse the very grump it names.

And for those of us who will be visiting our local polling places today, to vote for whatever ambiguously qualified candidate or proposition, may we find an opportunity to dispel the debilitating powers of Group Grump, however justified it might appear to be.

Play on, defenders of the playful!