Schadenfreude I

I try to be a better human being than that, really, but sometimes when I see another's misfortune, I think that they really deserved it. At the very least, it's satisfying to see consequences imposed, and easier knowing I wasn't the one who had to do the imposing. That way I can still tell myself that I'm a nice person.

The first case in point happened maybe 10-15 years ago. It was one of those January mornings when it was -31 and roads all over the metro were icing up from the exhaust of slowly moving vehicles in rush hour traffic. Black ice! Even if you couldn't see the stuff, and an observant person could, you should be able to feel the increasing lack of traction under your tires. And if you were still too sleep-deprived or whatever to notice road conditions, the radio had been trumpeting all morning the dangerous conditions and the mounting toll of spin-outs and accidents, part of what was slowing traffic down so more ice was laid down so more vehicles lost traction so traffic got slower.... It was the classic vicious spiral.

My journey that morning took me south from Minneapolis on 35W to the Crosstown Commons and beyond. They're supposedly fixing it now, meaning for a couple years it's even more dangerous, but at that time two freeways came together at right angles, with the larger squeezing down to two lanes, doing a 90 degree right turn to connect with the other for a mile while they swapped vehicles back and forth, and then performed a 90 degree left turn and went north/south again. In that mile you went from the right two lanes to the left two lanes to keep going the same way.

That morning with the black ice, traffic was a pretty steady 25-30 MPH, fine if you didn't need to turn or slow or anything. An annoying black SUV had been tailgating me for the last couple of miles before the first turn. The driver sped up a bit, moved back, and flashed his lights at me to move over, presumably so he could tailgate the car in front which also was going the same speed I was. Both knowing how futile his quest for increased speed was, and keenly aware how dangerous to me such a lane change was, I kept steady on my course. If anything, I backed slightly away from the car in front of me, figuring more space was needed for safety with this impatient idiot a part of the mix.

I white-knuckled it through the turn, now hoping against hope that the newly added left lane from the Crosstown was either clear or that the joining vehicles didn't see a sudden need to pull over right in front of me and risk a spin-out that I couldn't avoid. Fortunately, it was clear for a space, which gave the idiot behind me just the break he thought he needed. Gunning his engine, he fishtailed out of my lane into the left one... and kept fishtailing down the lane, overcorrecting with each move, until about halfway along the commons his SUV tried to mount the concrete barrier separating our lanes from the oncoming one.

The rest of us gave a huge sigh of relief that his antics hadn't impacted our cars, literally, and continued at our steady crawl to our destinations, risking brief glances over at the black SUV hung up on the barricade with one wheel hooked over the top. I, for one, laughed as I passed, partly from the adrenaline rush easing off from another accident avoided, and partly because the idiot so deserved it!

Let him stew!