Schadenfreude

Well, we played them again, and I was there (tough luck, Liv), and fortune gave me a string of opportunities for revenge, and I took those opportunities, and this is that story. With a twist. And there’s only one people who could have a word for what occurred, and those people are the Germans. And the word is “schadenfreude.”

I think German is the only language that has juicy, steak-thick words like that, nuggets that have deep and intricate resonance, that not only don’t fly off the tongue, but, rather, drop straight down like the collected works of Proust. To save you the web-search I just did, schadenfreude is defined as “pleasure derived from the misfortune of others; a malicious satisfaction, synonymous with gloating or fiendish glee.” Delicious. (It’s noteworthy that the name “Freud” is in there, from the Middle High German “vreude,” meaning joy. Ironic as well, since, judging from his body of work, no one ever pointed this out to Freud himself.) In other words, it was not going to be enough for us to outplay them and win the game; their coach had to suffer, to writhe and moan in a mythic, Teutonic struggle and come out the other end shattered like Michael Skakel’s ego when Martha Moxley told him he was fat and ugly.

Ahem. Normally, of course, civilized people recoil from these dark desires. Quite right, too. Why should anyone look to create a drama out of a T-ball game that would make “Gotterdammerung” look like “Cats”? Well, these are not normal times, my friends. We’re at war. And at that moment, on that field, looking at that man, I was girding for a fight on the home front. Or in the throes of a neurotic delusion. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Prepare, villain! Gaze into the abyss! Your judgment is at hand!

As Lee Marvin said after his big duel in “Cat Ballou,” ohhhhh, it was sweet. From the first play, with our guys at bat, everyone on the bad team made error after error. That wasn’t the sweet part. After all, they’re just kids, too. (Well, maybe it was a little sweet.) The really joyful part was that after each error, after each of our kids reached base, the red-faced, evil coach would charge out and over to the offending tyke and yell at him like a French chef yelling at, oh, anyone.

He was clearly more and more livid after each play, which, of course, made us giggle more and more after each play. At one point I said to the dozen or so parents on our side, “The happiest I’ve been in two years of this goofy league is seeing that guy this unhappy.” That got a big laugh. My wife squeezed my hand. Then, his son made an error, too, and he really laced into him, so much so that the umpire told him to cut it out and let the game continue. I turned to the peanut gallery and said, “In ten years, the first one that kid shoots will be his father, and there isn’t a jury in the world that will convict him.” Another big laugh. Another squeeze of the hand. A couple of innings later, with their team up at bat, a little girl missed the ball after a mighty, little-girl swing, and accidentally flung the bat backwards at her coach’s feet. One of our mothers called out helpfully, “Hold onto the bat, now, honey.” To which I added, “Or aim higher.” Another laugh. A kiss on the cheek this time. I leaned over to The Divine Mrs. M. and whispered, “How about I grab a bottle of champagne on the way home? After we put the kids down, I’ll take a quick shower, shave, and . . . Qui sait?” She smiled in agreement. Ronald Colman, eat your heart out. And the cherry on top? The next time we were in the field, my kid scooped up three grounders in a row and made three put-outs, the last one on the coach’s kid. Yup, mighty sweet.

Then, suddenly, after only three innings, the umpire told everyone to leave the field; the game was over. What? Puzzlement, shock, outrage. We all looked around and started to buzz. Literally. That wasn’t helping, so we began to use words again. What’s going on here? Well, said the ump, the other coach wants to quit early to go home and watch the Lakers. What? Hey, come on, you can’t . . . That’s not fair . . . Let the kids . . . Who cares about the damn . . . Et cetera. But the deed was done, the kids were packing, and we all shrugged. Oh, what the heck, it’s a beautiful evening, and the kids had fun. Let’s just go to Burger King a little earlier. But, boy, did we ever glare at him, the dirty so-and-so. He wants to go home?! Arrrgggh . . . My wife took the baby in her car, and I took our little Phil Rizzuto in my car.

A side note: My son and I stopped off at the public restroom on the way to the parking lot. There’s a urinal and a toilet in there, and the toilet, by design, has no door on the stall. In fact, it has no stall. I imagine the reason is that The Powers That Be don’t want anyone closing the door and doing whatever it is we’d rather folks not do in there, such as an impression of George Michael. Fair enough. On the down side, if anyone is, shall we say, sitting on the throne when you walk in, whatever the guy is doing is as visible as when your cell-mate does it at Sing Sing. So as we entered the facility, as usual, I was reciting our public-toilet catechism: “What do we never do in places like this?” “Well, Dad, we never touch anything except ourselves, and you do the flushing with your foot, and we don’t even wash ’til we get to where we’re going.” This is followed by my brief sketch of the life and work of Joseph Lister.

This time, however, we turned the tiled corner right into a homeless guy-slash-bum on the toilet. And not a recent convert, either. There he sat, pants down, the life of Riley. In the middle, so to speak. Audibly.

If the KGB ever decides to reconstitute itself solely for the purpose of kidnapping me and carting me off to the basement of Lubyanka Prison for one of their old-fashioned, “Ipcress File” braindrains, and if they succeed–as, no doubt, they would–in scraping every thought and image from my mind and soul, I am deeply afraid that the very last picture I will be holding in my skull, the one that just can’t be shaken, will be of that guy on the toilet. And that’s a shame, really, because in my salad days on the road I was a bit of a rake, bit of a roue, bit of a boulevardier, and I would far rather that last image be of one of my dazed amours and the various atrocities we committed. That is now impossible. Ah, well.

Anyway, we staggered back outside in horror and resumed legging it to the car. My wife had belted and bolted the little one into his Mercury-capsule seat and waved to us from a hundred feet away. I turned to my car . . . and stopped short, for I was looking at something that gave me so much pleasure I almost wept. Picture Moses’ face seeing the Promised Land for the first time. (Just before God mentioned, “Oh, and by the way, you’re not getting there.”)

You see, I was standing just behind my car, and right next to it was the evil coach getting into his car. Unbelievable. What were the odds? His wife was in the driver’s seat, his kid in the back, and he was coming around to the front passenger door . . . just two feet from mine! Oh, Lord, this was going to be even better than I had daydreamed it. My mind raced: What should I say? “Hey, buddy, you want to watch the Lakers? I hope your cable goes out.” No, no, go for something more substantial. “Say, what kind of coach rides his players like . . .” No, no, quick, think, you fool, he’s about to get in, you’ll never have another chance like this again. I looked back over to my wife, whose eagle-eyes had spotted the malefactor even before I did. She mimed something that was a combination of “Tell him off good” and “Strangle him; we’ll visit you every week.” Then she roared off, greedy for the prospects of a burger and the report of my vengeance. Just as well. No place for women and babies, anyway. Some things are better left to men. No time for planning, just shoot from the hip. I was made for this moment, this clown needs a lesson, and I’m the guy to–

He turned and saw my son, and a great, kind smile spread over his face. “Hey, you’re the shortstop, right? Say, you’re great. I’m serious, son, you’ve got some wonderful skills. Someone’s really teaching you well.” He ruffled the boy’s hair and turned to his wife. “Honey, look, it’s that terrific shortstop.” She leaned out with another beaming smile and said, “Well, hello, slugger, we started calling you the vacuum cleaner. You just scooped up everything that came your way, didn’t you?” My son smiled shyly and giggled. Then the coach looked up at me. “You know, your boy is really good. In fact, all the kids on your team are good. To tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking I get too wrapped up in the wrong things with my team. I talked to your coach, and I think I’ll just get my guys working on fundamentals like you.”

Gulp. Yikes. Talk about taking the wind out of someone’s sails. The guy couldn’t have been sweeter if he were trying out for the lead in “The Edmund Gwynn Story.” Maybe he’s not such a bad–NO! I shook my head to clear it and steeled myself anew. The villain still deserved to be chastised for . . . uh, something. Oh, yeah, for teaching his kids to–What was it again? I tried desperately to remember. And then he hit me with the coup de grace. From this blow there would be no return. Can you guess? His smile widened, his eyes blinked, and he pointed and said, “Hey, are you Larry Miller? The actor? Oh, my God, you are. We just love you. God, you’re funny, no kidding, everything you do. Honey, look who it is!” His wife screamed with pleasure, and his son bounced out of the car. “Max Keeble! Can I have your autograph?” As I was signing, his father leaned in and said, “To be honest, I know most of what you do is comedy, but I think you’re terrific in drama, too. Like those ‘Law & Orders.'”

Game. Set. Match.

As we walked into Burger King, my wife waved us over, jammed some food into the kids’ hands and slid across to me salivating, and not for a Whopper. “Well, what happened?”

“You mean with the . . . coach?”

“Of course I mean the coach. It’s so exciting! Could you even believe it? You’ve been talking for weeks about what happened to me, what you’d do to the guy, and then there he is, right next to you! Unbelievable! So, what did you say?” She gasped and giggled. “You didn’t hit him, did you? I mean, I kind of hope you did, in a way.”

“Well, now, honey, it’s a funny thing. You know how sometimes you think people are gonna be a certain way, and then . . . I mean, you wouldn’t have believed it, he was so complimentary to, well, the whole team, really, but especially our–”

Her voice went down a register, and she grabbed my shirt. “Larry, I almost got banned from the league for life for standing up to him. He coached the kids to knock ours down and hit them with the ball. HE DOESN’T ROTATE HIS PLAYERS, FOR GOD’S SAKE.” And then her eyes narrowed, and she saw through me like a baby-doll peignoir. “He recognized you, didn’t he?”

“Honey, please, it’s not that sim–” But she was already backing away, her expression probably close to the last one John Wayne Bobbitt saw on Lorena’s face. I made it even worse. “Honey, he knew the dramatic stuff!”

***

Later. Home. Downstairs, kids asleep, sound of the TV from the bedroom. Glass of Jameson’s. No shower. Why does Melville have to tell you every damn thing about every damn whale? God. Maybe back to the twentieth century after this. Yeah. Lighter, maybe. Fitzgerald? Galsworthy? My mother’s favorite. Nah, something with more teeth. Rand? It’s been a while. But which one? “Who is John Galt?” Once had bumper stickers printed up saying that. When was that, ’89? Maybe the other one. Roark sure didn’t take any guff from that woman, did he? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Schadenfreude, indeed.

Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.