Schadenfreude

It was the first gift on her way back to a semi-normal life, courtesy of the the dirty-faced, willfull twins who had stretched their mother's patience too thinly.

The poor woman stood desperate in the supermarket isle of disaster as her boys, probably age four, continued to pull boxes of cereal from the shelves, ignoring all civil requests to stop. The store manager even tried to step in. How embarrasing. Finally a loud, angry yet helpless "STOP!" pierced the air, and the action did stop if only for a moment. Shoppers turned to look at the young mother who had just broken, shook their heads, and wheeled their carts away from the mess. The twins looked at each other, laughed, and continued their rein of terror over Kellogs and General Mills.

The mother, with a sad, empty look, calmly grabbed her children by the hand, walked like a zombie toward the exit (despite the resistant pulling and biting), and left the chaos for someone else to clear away.

Sarah was gleeful at the scene and tried hard to hide it, but she was sure the mother saw the slight smile on her face as she passed with her struggling children. Sarah didn't care. Why should she? Her own five-year-old quadruplets were in their first day of school, and Sarah was enjoying her first day of freedom in five years.

Alone she managed to raise four obedient girls, and doing so in her early forties made the task doubly difficult. Twin trouble was nothing. It only seemed fair that Sarah take in scenes like this as payback. Besides, she would need to pick up the girls from kindergarten in a couple hours and would need something to sustain her spirits.