Once upon a time I read that there are only four basic emotions in life: glad, sad, mad, and afraid. Since then I sometimes amuse myself by trying to think of emotions that don’t fit. I’ve definitely found a few borderline cases — anxious? Afraid, I guess. Hopeful? Glad, I suppose. Cranky? I guess mad.

But I think I may have found something that doesn’t fit at all, even with a stretch, and that’s “surprise.” I was reading the Thomas The Tank Engine catalogue with Captain Jelly Belly today, and there is a Thomas in the book with a face where his eyes are wide open and his mouth is making an “O” shape, and we taught the Captain that this is Thomas’ “surprised” face. He’s making the face, incidentally, because a jet engine that he is pulling has suddenly started up, and now he’s zooming fast on the rails like a rocket.

So what, basically, is Thomas feeling in this case? I conclude that “surprised” alone isn’t enough to describe an actual emotion. There’s happy surprised (exhilarated), sad surprised (crushed), mad surprised (shocked and offended), and even afraid surprised (startled). Interesting semantics. I would say, using this theory, that Thomas and his jet engine are partly afraid surprised, and partly glad surprised. Or, do you think that surprised just falls under the afraid category and that’s it? Hm.

On a related note I’ve been watching a lot of Blue’s Clues lately and every day they introduce one or two new signs, for sign language. I wonder, do they bother in sign language to have a motion for every single possible word in English? I guess they could spell stuff out if need be, but do they have different signs for “happy” versus “glad” versus “joyful”? Or do they just have one “positive feeling” sign and go with that? Do they bother having different signs for the different verb tenses, or is “walk” and “walking” and “walked” all the same sign?

Hm.