I hear my son say to his brother, "Ha-ha! Stevie got in trouble." What my child is experiencing is Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is something that everyone experiences at one time or another. I see it almost every day. It is a fairly new word, but what it means has been around since the dawn of times. It is a natural aspect of human behavior. Let's get down to the history of the word Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is a German word that is gained from two characters. "Schaden" translates to mean damage or harm, while "Freude" translates to mean joy or delight. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Schadenfreude as Malicious enjoyment of the misfortunes of others. Schadenfreude has been about since the dawn of times. It is a natural aspect of human behavior. People do not understand why others get joy out of others failure, but it does happen and has always been so there just was not a term for it until recently.
When I was younger, I experienced Schadenfreude many times. I did not have any siblings around when I was a young child, but I had my cousins around. When they would get in trouble for something I would feel happy about it sometimes. It sounds a little mean, but it was just a feeling of relief, I guess because it was not me who got in trouble. As I grew older I was picked on a lot about my weight by kids in school. They would say, "Hey, here comes thunder thighs!" They would also say,"oh no earthquake" as I got on the bus and would start to shake their bodies back and forth. It hurt my feelings really bad at first. I continued to keep things to myself and worked hard at school. With me working hard at school, I exceeded in my studies and was excellent in spelling. We held a spelling bee at my school and we did classroom spelling bees to find out who would represent each class to move on to the entire school. Well, I did very well and was picked for my class.
