Faithful readers of this column (And you don’t have to have been all that faithful; there are only eleven of them. My “oeuvre.”) will recall that a few weeks ago I wrote about our local T-ball league and how one of my kids is playing in it, and how we played against the bad team (boo) led by the evil coach (big boo), who had taught his players to chase down our kids like loan-sharks going after truant customers. I also wrote that my heroic wife (yay) had stood up to the evil coach (another boo) and was dressed down by the umpire for her troubles. And how proud I was of her, and that even though I wasn’t present at that game, we were going to be playing them again, and that I was planning to move heaven and earth to be there the next time. (Unless, of course, I was filming a love scene with Liv Tyler, in which case I was planning to move her like heaven and earth. Okay, that’s never going to happen. I’ll be at the next game.)
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.”
