Quite Literally

This story begins about a month ago, on my trip to Thailand. It was late in the evening and I was sitting on the floor of my beach bungalow with my brother, sister, and dad. We were playing Oh Heck, one of the greatest card games known to man. For those of you who are unacquainted with Oh Heck, let me educate you. Seven cards are dealt to all players and they each place a bid on how many tricks they'll take. Taking a trick involves playing the card that is higher than all others in a given round, within a certain suit. The key to Oh Heck is not winning as many as possible, it's getting your bid. Hence, it is possible to win all seven tricks and yet get negative points in total if your bid was for zero tricks. Fewer and fewer cards are dealt with each consecutive round until a round is played with only one card, then rounds are played dealing more cards until the final round is played with seven cards again.

On that particular evening, Elena suggested that we play only from seven cards down to one and then stop. Aghast at this heretical suggestion, I insisted that we play the whole game, as "Playing up is half the fun!" I realized the double meaning in this statement and then followed it with "... quite literally!"

For some reason, Elena found this hilarious and asked me to say it again, this time with one index finger raised to strengthen my point. Thus was born the phrase of the trip, "Quite literally." It was repeated whenever circumstances made it amusing.

Fast-forward to yesterday's Economics 425 class (the Economics of International Trade), where Dr. G is explaining to us the virtues of globalism versus localism. Using an apt example, he demonstrates that although parsnips are tasty and we can produce lots of them in our Albertan climate, some of us like pineapples as well. "Unfortunately" he says, "when it comes to the production of pineapples, Alberta has been left out in the cold... quite literally."

You can imagine the immensity of my desire to burst into laughter and the odd looks I got from my classmates as I tried to hold it in. Especially since none of them seemed to find the pun that amusing.

Quite literally.