Schadenfreude

Last Sunday, The Son went to my mother's place to chill and bumped into his aunties and uncles. Nothing doing, except that his auntie is 4 years old, and his uncles are 7 and 8 years old. A noisier, rowdier bunch of three I've never seen. Coming from a household where the loudest thing in the house is the television set (and even so, only when his father is watching TV), I fully expected The Son to experience major culture shock and the attending withdrawal symptoms (crying, clinginess and a general desire to relocate to someplace quieter).

By way of an example, when I told them to keep quiet because "the baby is sleeepinggg", 2 out of 3 shouted "KEEP QUIET!!! THE BABY IS SLEEPING!!!!" to the others. And if that didn't wake him, they proceeded to stand around touching and patting his little baby arms and face. Sigh.

Although the little baby mouth did start to turn down initially, he got used to them almost immediately after he woke up. Towards the end of the evening, he stood in the middle of my mother's living room, watching:

1. One uncle bash another uncle on the head with a wooden hammer;
2. The other uncle refusing to share his ice cream; and
3. One auntie running around screaming and crying at the top of her lungs trying to avoid her flu injection,

and he smiled. A little baby schadenfreude smile. Like, wow, 3 people are being scolded right now and none of them is me! I'm the best!

The photo above is The Son at Centrepoint, watching his father "crying" after The Son kicked him in the face or something like that. We thought it might teach him sympathy if he saw the consequences of his action.

I've looked at that photo very carefully, and have to admit I cannot find a single molecule or pixel of sympathy. His expression is more like "Wow, looks like the old guy's pretty upset. I wonder what's gotten into him."