Moments of schadenfreude in your life.

Inspired by this thread, in which I related a delicious little bit of linguistic schadenfreude I once experienced. It got me thinking about another incident, also involving military personnel in my hometown.

Note: I swear to God I have nothing against military personnel. Most of my family served at one time or another, and I while I did not, I have no problems with the military on any kind of personal level. These events are coincidental. Thank you for your service. Sincerely.

A few years after the incident in the linked thread, I had moved away from the town in question for a while, and then returned from economic necessity (OK, I had to move back in with the folks for a while. I was desperate). While I was getting back on my feet, I got a job with the state, and my normal commute passed by a National Guard armory.

I was sitting at the left turn in front of the armory, gathering wool and waiting for my light to turn, and I suddenly heard that distinctive SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE - BLAM of a nearby traffic accident.

I look over to my left, and see it. Somebody had been rear-ended on the road I was about to turn onto, about 2 or 3 blocks before the armory. The light turned, and I pulled forward and got out to see if everyone was OK.

The young lady who had been hit got out of the car and assured me that she was fine, but she was going to pick up her husband at the armory, a Sgt. Something-Or-Other (let’s say Smith), and could I be so kind as to let him know what happened?

Sure. No problem. Glad you’re OK. Cops are coming.

I pull into the armory and go inside the office. Two uniformed guys are standing there. I walk up to one of them, note that his name tag does not say “Smith”, and ask if he knows where I can find him.

He and the other guy, who was standing at a counter behind me, lock eyes for just a second, and the first guy says, “Uh, I’m not sure. Ask Jones over there.”

I turn around and approach the other guardsman, and note that he has no name tag on. How convenient. Here we go.

“Do you know where I can find Sgt. Smith?”

“Smith? I don’t think we have a Sgt. Smith. Did you ask Johnson over there?”

I looked at him in the eye, and said, “Look, when you guys figure out who’s who around here, would you mind telling Sgt. Smith that his wife was involved in a car accident up the road, and she asked me to tell him?”

The guy turned absolutely white, stammered out an apology, and as soon as I had given him the details, he left at a dead run.

Yeah, I admit it. It felt good. Sorry. Hopefully, they thought twice before dicking around with a stranger the next time.

I was a kid at the time, probably in 6th grade. There was this one girl, Janet, who I couldn’t stand. She didn’t like me either. Another kid brought in his beagle for show and tell. For a while we just let the dog run around the classroom. I called him over started petting him. Janet, wanting to call me ugly by comparing me to a dog, said “They always go to their own kind.” She might as well have said “Here boy!”

:smiley:

I had an ex cheat on me then marry the girl.

Found out recently that she cheated on him and got married a few weeks after they divorced.

HA!

I knew a guy that had a few racist notions in his life. He would spout bullshit about Jews, blacks, etc., usually out of the blue.
I ran into him one day and he was kind of withdrawn. He told me he went to his grandmother’s funeral, and noticed there were Stars of David on display by the coffin…
The good thing is it did change him for the better.

Many years ago, I was intern at a manufacturing company. I was a few days from going back to school and the warehouse manager was a bitter old guy, counting the days until retirement.

My boss asked me to go to the warehouse and get a mechanical counter. The warehouse manager said you could get a monkey to do that.

I said “but don’t you already have a job?”

As a Packer fan, watching the travails of Brett Favre and the 2010 Minnesota Vikings has given me more than a bit of shadenfreude.

I once saw a car driving up the shoulder of a highway with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Right past the police car several cars ahead. :smiley:

Similar story.

SF Bay Area traffic-stop and go. Motorcycle comes through splitting lanes(legal in Ca.). Driver sees the bike coming, throws open his door into the biker’s path, forcing him to an abrupt stop.

Biker responded by flipping on his lights and siren. :smiley:

This was great…

My nieces and nephews were playing in a hotel pool that was also being used by a gaggle of early teen girls. These girls were awful. They decided to pick on one member of their group by chasing her around and spitting pool water at her repeatedly. It got bad enough that my sister in law spoke up and told them that they were bothering everyone else and the spitting was gross.

At least that unified the girls because they stopped picking on the one member of their troop and banded together to be annoying. Rather than spitting at anyone, they’d blow water into the air and suck it back into their mouths again. I suppose they thought they were being hilarious as they followed everyone around doing their beluga whale impressions.

Until, that is, when my 3-year old niece started crying and wailed to us (in that “I’m crying so I’ve forgotten my inside voice” way she had): “I had to PEE and I didn’t MAKE it and I PEED in the POOL. I’m SORRY mommy!”

The expression on the faces of the girls who had just inhaled more mouthfuls of water will live with me for a long, long time.

I was driving on the freeway once going the speed limit (100 km/h) when I was passed by some idiot doing at least 130.

I caught up to him shortly thereafter, when a cop had pulled him over.

Similar story: I was stuck in traffic once, and a guy passed me driving on the shoulder. This apparently inspired several other motorists, as three or four of them pulled out of the lane and followed him down the shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, my car finally inches around a curve in the road, and up ahead I see a squad car parked on the should ahead of four stopped cars, with the patrolman leisurely making his way down the line, handing out tickets.

I have some neighbors from hell. Their yard abuts my back yard, which abuts my bedroom window, and they have five dogs (tiny yard, neighborhood with houses and apts all up on each other, practically) that bark day and night. They’re also very crude, trashy, nasty pieces of work and have a domestic violence problem. One day as I’m coming home from a walk, I see that they’ve been fighting and the police are there. As I’m walking (slowly now) and watching, they arrest him and put him in a car. Then, she opens her purse in front of a cop to get something out, and her stash falls out. So she is then arrested and put in a car, too. Oh my god, I laughed and laughed. I did stop myself from pointing, though. :smiley:

A relative took me to court over some missing photographs and some various other things. A year later she was diagnosed with cancer. :smiley: Three months later she died. :mad: I had wanted her death to drag on in slow, painful increments for at least two years. Some day, I’ll probably fell bad that I ever thought that, but three years later I don’t.

I was leaving college when some guy pulled right in front of me as he was leaving a gas station. I wasn’t leaving room for him, he just went as fast as he could in order to squeeze in between me and caused me to slam on my breaks…and then he hit the car in front of him.

That made me insanely happy.

I went to my first high school counsellor for some counselling…you know, I wanted her to do her job. She basically blew me off with some pretty bad advice about accepting my role as a female and trying to be more of a team player (not those words, but she really just wanted me to shut up about getting into the classes that I wanted). I won’t go into the details here, let’s just say that I did this more than once, and she blew me off more than once. In my second high school, I set the record for the highest PSAT score in its history (and I believe that record still stands) along with some other scholastic achievements. After I’d graduated high school, she found out about the scores and achievements, and contacted me, wanting to know if she could list me as one of her successes. I told her that she most certainly could not, and I reminded her of her blowing me off and giving me bad advice, which, if I’d followed, would not have resulted in my achievements.

MAN, that felt good.

Once I pulled across several lanes in order to get into a left hand turn lane. I pulled in front of a car and it would have been considered a “cut off”, except it was very close to a red light and they would have to stop anyway.

But the car I pulled in front of either was mesmerized by the sight of a car moving perpendicular to it, or wanted to teach me a lesson by cutting as close as possible to me, or was simply oblivious. Anyway, the car I almost cut off didn’t stop for the stopped car that was right beside me and hit it. Good times.

Nope. In order to be happy at the suffering of someone else you actually have to have some value of your own to justify it. And we all know I have none of that, so…

Mookie, shut up. Life isn’t all about you.

My late brother, #3, had mental health issues and was a racist. Blacks and jews were The Problem. etc. Eventually, when he got medication, the Blacks and Jews weren’t The Problem (so much).

When he was in his final week of life, on life support, all his ICU nurses were black.
My mom and I thought this deliciously ironic.

I love this. You are a new hero of mine.