At one point in my life I had a certain disipline that anger was not a part of.  In fact, I’ve always held the belief that anger, when expressed, indicates a loss of control that should be avoided if possible.  Problem is, adhereing to diciplines that exclude natural brain processes leads to an unnatural brain, and I had some problems with that in my youth.  So, I’m ‘normal’ now, but I’ve been finding in the last few years that I spend a lot of my time angry, and I still think that wasteful. 

I’m not talking about angry, like "aw man, that bastard took my spot".  Thats a good example, but I’m talking about a more raging gibbering anger.  Example:

Yesterday, I got off work, headed home to play my 30 minutes allotted me for Oblivion time and relax before picking up the kids.  I headed over to Cemestos Gardens to pick em up, so far, so good.  I had to go pay the court costs for my brush with the Man’s justice, and go grocery shopping.  We decided to get one of those tasty assed rotisserie chickens, but the Food City on the east side of town doesn’t have a deli, because its LAME, so I had to drive to Kroger to get one after we went grocery shopping at Food City.  It made sense at the time…

Problem is, because of the severe and whimsical nature of chicken supply and demand, and because Food City is so interested in selling me stuff that they bought Bi-lo, Kroger had no chickens to sell me.  So, like the chicken desiring fool that I am, off we went to Walmart.  Now, for me, Walmart is like Mordor.  Its like a living Jhonen Vasquez strip, with weird, somewhat off people milling about like zombies looking for deals on rugs and frozen chuckwagon patties.  I am uncomfortable there, and I’m heading in at 5:30 PM on a Monday. 

Anyway, 20 minutes later, I made off with a chicken, but there was a muscle twitching uncomfortably in my temple.  MastaG and Pigpen had aquitted themselves well, but were well aware that a wrong move will bring down a ton of Dadwrath on the drive back home. 

Therein lies the problem.  While I’m not kicking and screaming and turning redfaced like those people we all like to laugh at, I’m seething with anger and white knuckled rage way too often.  I still agree that anger is a weakness at those times, and further, I think its a weakness that can be avoided, but the discipline needed to avoid it needs to be exercised in order to be strong enough to put up with Walmart and turnpike traffic during Monday post work rush. 

A few years ago, when I was being Mr. Mom and we were living in the projects, I had that discipline.  With a 2 year old buddy and a wife at work, I had the time to sand down those rough edges of my personality that made my sholders tense up and palms sweat when confronted with irritations, but somewhere in the past 7 years or so I’ve lost it, and I’m not sure where it is. 

Whatever.  Dadwrath is my new favorite word. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.