Here you are, walking the plank, your back towards the water. You never thought it would come to this. The fear of not knowing how close you were to the edge was causing you to tremble, like a man about to be executed by walking the pl- nevermind. What other experience could compare?
Walking the plank. How embarrassing. What would your friends think of you? What would your mother say? What would the captain's men say? Actually, you know what the captain's men were saying because they were right in front of you, making light of the corner you had painted yourself into. But you wondered what the captain's men were thinking deep down in their hearts, saltened by years at sea. Anyone seeing the fear in you? Any sympathy for you, unconsciously hidden by the waves of laughter falling over you?
Wait.
Any shrimpathy?
You shared laughter with the captain's men for one moment; your thoughts began floating away from your current plight.
It would be an evening on the deck. A sudden jolt of the ship would have made you choke on your drink; as the crew began laughing, you would redeem yourself with a clever joke. "What, no shrimpathy for me?" The crew would begin laughing even harder in response to your dorky comment. But for one moment you would have built some form of good favor with the crew. Oh dear Lord above! All of your opportunities had fell through! You would never build good favor with the crew! You would never indulge in merriment outside of your imagination!
You reran the scene in your head, thinking of ways to perfect the timing, intonation, and delivery of the line. A meticulously crafted illusion. If you believed hard enough, you could just pretend the scene really did happen, and everyone else must have forgotten. But you didn't want the others to forget your one moment of unity with them! Then it must be that you were the only one who remembered that specific instance; everyone remembers things slightly different. So it would only make sense that the rest of the crew had no memory of the scene from your perspective, they only remembered their own perspective and they certainly thought it was a clever, if somewhat cheesy, joke.
The crew certainly must have shrimpathy for you, then.
"What the hell's so funny, dipshit?" A pirate jeer made you zone back in to your reality.
Take the opportunity.
"Is there no shrimpathy for me?" You mumble.