So we’re all familiar with schadenfreude right? Good. I think schadenfreude is the most comfortable human feeling. It’s right up there with biting into a hot pocket. How many of us hoped that our high school enemy would fall on the stage on the way to get her prom queen crown, or blackout and get stabbed by an angry biker gang, or something, I don’t know we didn’t have prom queens at my high school, I went to an all girls school so I don’t really know how normal high schools work. But that’s not important right now.

I know that at some point we have all wished our ex some kind of harm. Whether it was being insulted by Marshall McLuhan while in line at the movies or having a birdcage fall on their head, we wanted them to befall some sort of misfortune. And if you haven’t wanted that then maybe you should just get into your magical flying pirate ship and fly back to Happyface Island where monkeys are high fiving each other and barbershop quartets are singing on every corner. I don’t know.

We just want to laugh at their misfortune. My friend got the opportunity of a lifetime.

Her ex, a smarmy a-hole law school student, was bitchslapped by karma on national TV when he lost one million dollars on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. I couldn’t watch the whole thing because I have this thing where I can’t watch “real people” get embarrassed. It makes me cringe. I can watch Curb Your Enthusiasm because that’s not “real” but hidden camera shit or something makes me turn away. But what I did see was glorious. He went from high fiving the audience like a tool to nearly bursting into tears when he lost everything. The best part is that REGIS PHILBIN told his girlfriend, sitting in the studio audience, to dump him.

I’m not going to go into the sordid details of their relationship so let’s just say that he wasn’t very kind to her. So there’s that. Also it would be cruel to laugh at this if he was a poor college student but this kid is 24 and makes six figures at his entertainment lawyer job and graduated from _______ Law so he’s set for life. He also went to college when he was 16 which is why he’s 24 and already practicing law. When asked what he was going to do with the money if he won it, he said he was going to go to Antarctica because it’s the only continent he’d never been to.

The first guy I was ever with broke my heart. He also came from a privileged background and I wanted nothing more than to see him crash and burn for running around on me with another girl. But guess what? After the dust had settled and we had both grown up a bit, he sent me an email in which he admitted that he treated me terribly and that he was sorry.

That’s all it takes. An apology, but a heartfelt one, in which you realized what an ass you were. Thats what makes the schadenfreude go away. And girls do this too. Girls are mean and break hearts and are assholes. It’s not just a guy thing. Being a dick has no gender. If you are one, you need to realize that at some point in your life you’re going to be humiliated on national television by Regis Philbin and that people are going to put that on youtube and laugh at you. Or something. But if you realize that you were a jerk and you feel badly about it then we’re going to be there for you with a kick to Regis’s crotch. Then we’ll watch the youtube video in which Bret Michaels gets hit in the head by the descending scenery at the Tony Awards, and that will never not be funny, and we will never need to apologize for it.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes — The Platters
Runaround Sue — Dion & The Belmonts
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do — Neil Sedaka
Pennies From Heaven — Regis Philbin