The Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude. It means something like “joy in the sorrow of others.” And I confess that it sometimes strikes me.
But that’s not quite how I felt after watching accounts of the big blizzard at the end of 2010 in the Northeast that paralyzed cities, disrupted transportation and stranded passengers.
Initially, I thought “We get a couple of feet of snow every now and again, and nobody worries that much about it. We just hunker down for a couple of days. So why are the people of New York, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia so whiny?”
I wanted to come to the conclusion that we folks in the boondocks represent America’s sturdy yeomanry, whereas those city folks are a bunch of “wusses,” to use Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s description of those who decided to postpone a football game in Philadelphia.
But on further thought, I decided that we take the occasional serious blizzard in stride for several reasons, none exactly related to rural virtue. Four-wheel-drive vehicles are common, so frequently we can drive if necessary after a storm. In a small town, work or shopping is just blocks away, so it’s possible to wade through drifts, and if they’re too deep for wading, there are other methods — I once skied cross-country to work at the local newspaper after a 30-inch snowstorm.
The main reason, though, is that we live in America’s backwaters. Nothing really important will suffer if we don’t get out for a day or two. The world’s financial markets won’t notice our absence, and the same cannot be said for bond traders on Wall Street. Millions of TV viewers won’t notice if we don’t get to work that day. The work of government will go on, even if we don’t answer a roll call. Our airports are not hubs whose closure will back up planes on three continents.
So we can let nature take its course once in a while. And we can be grateful for that, if not exactly joyful that millions of urban residents feel compelled to go somewhere on a hard day.
Ed Quillen is a freelance writer in Salida, Colorado.
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