U.S. weather struggles make me chortle

Dear America: I’ve been following your “extreme weather” news coverage, and I know you’ve been in crisis — under assault from the polar vortex.

There were “whiteouts” in North Dakota, scary weekly snowfalls of 37 inches in Buffalo, and temperatures plunging to minus 23 F (minus -30.5 C) in Chicago with a “real feel” of minus 29 F (minus -33.8 C).

The New York Times calls it “The Big Freeze” — but frankly, it just sounds like another winter day in Quebec and Canada.

Here in Montreal, we’ve been going through rougher weather for weeks: an ever-changing smorgasbord of blizzards, followed by rainstorms, followed by freezing temperatures, murderous wind chills, treacherous ice.

But for us, it’s just crummy winter weather, while for you it’s a national emergency.

U.S. governors declared national disasters, closing schools and universities for days. Iowa officials warned people to “avoid taking deep breaths, and to minimize talking” if they stepped outside.

Newspaper headlines across America shrieked it was “colder than Alaska” ... “colder than Antarctica” ... “colder than Mars.”

Reading it all, I certainly felt some sympathy, since we Montrealers have been there often. But I did have mixed feelings. I confess that like many people here, I also got a certain satisfaction from knowing you were sharing our pain.

It’s that unique Canadian joy of knowing others are as cold, or colder than us.

I call that feeling schaden-froid, my version of the German word schadenfreude, which means the guilty happiness you sometimes get from someone else’s misfortune.

You may experience schadenfreude when your office rival has just been fired, or your ex-boyfriend’s house has burned down, or you’ve just heard someone you don’t like mispronounce the fancy German word schadenfreude.

In fact, I rarely get more response to this column than when things in my life go wrong, whether I lose my phone, drop my car keys down a drain or my balcony gets taken over by pigeons.

I’ve often said the worse my

week, the happier I make my readers, as they experience schadenFreed.

But schaden-froid is a unique and especially powerful emotion here in Canada during winter, when we all get a tiny bit of joy from other countries’ cold.

It’s nothing personal, America, just part of being a Canadian and especially a Montrealer, who lives in one of the coldest, snowiest cities on Earth.

After all, we know people elsewhere are always hearing about our winter weather and thinking: “Boy, I’m happy I don’t live there!” So it’s only natural for us to do the same when we get a rare chance.

But schaden-froid actually runs much deeper in our Canadian psyche. That’s why when Canadians go away on winter holiday, they obsessively follow the weather back home, eager to see what they’ve escaped.

“Listen up everyone! It’s minus 28 in Montreal today, with 43 centimetres of snow expected tomorrow,” they’ll announce gleefully to everyone on their Costa Rican beach. “Wow, I’m glad I’m not there, heh-heh.”

Part of any good Canadian winter holiday is knowing what others at home are living through that you’re not.

That’s also why in Florida, the Weather Network gets huge ratings whenever there’s a winter storm in the North. It’s a million Canadian snowbirds (and New England ones) all dying to see what horrible weather they’re missing.

That said, you can only take this sleazy emotion so far. People enjoying a little schaden-froid should always do it politely, and even secretly — keeping it between others in the same temperature zone as them.

No one wants to get an email photo of you sacked out on the beach, a margarita in your hand, while they’re waiting for the 15 bus, in -22 degrees, while hanging onto the bus stop pole to keep from slipping on a five-inchthick slab of glacial sidewalk ice.

So don’t be a schaden-showoff

— and keep your schaden-froid to yourself. In fact, if you’re on an exotic vacation and sending photos, I’d prefer to see one of you caught in a tropical storm.

Besides, you’ll get plenty of schaden-envy once you get home — and every last person you meet says: “Boy, you really timed your holiday well, It was as cold as Mars here, only worse.”

But of course how couldn’t you time your vacation well, when you took it during the middle of a Montreal winter?

Yet for all my schaden-froid about the recent U.S. cold snap, I also feel some schaden-shame —a twinge of guilt for feeling good about their weather misfortune.

After all, I know people in the U.S. were freezing, or without power, or worse, while thousands of flights were cancelled.

I ask myself: How can I be so heartless, so petty, so shallow, so mean? My schaden-froid and my schaden-shame struggle like angels and devils on my shoulder — fighting for my soul.

Yet somehow my schaden-froid often wins and I suspect yours does, too. But if you want to know why, you’ll have to read Freud, not Freed.