SCHADENFREUDE

I have a dark, dark secret to share with you.

I laugh at people when they are in pain.

I am so ashamed.

The other night I was watching "Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza" on the Game Show Network (this is what happens when you can't sleep at night & have 8,983 channels on satellite television), and they did a sketch where (I am being honest here) the floor was covered with BAITED MOUSETRAPS and the improvers, blindfolded as well as BAREFOOT, were left to act out a scene.

Needless to say, the mousetraps snapped and pinched and bit the actors, and the audience AS WELL AS MYSELF roared with laughter as the event progressed and more and more pain occurred.

Now why do we do that?

There is a word in German, Schadenfreude, which has become one of those wait-a-minute-you-mean-that-is-not-English words (like Gesundheit, graffiti, shanghai, bikini - bet you didn't know bikini is not English) which describes something in a way the English word/expression can't.

Schadenfreude literally translates as 'damage joy', but it's come to mean pleasure at someone else's pain or discomfort.

And I am ashamed of the fact that I do it.

Wait a minute, YOU do it ALSO?!