Unleashing My Inner Rage

I was recently talking to a co-worker and trying to write something down on a post-it note at the same time. As usual, the pen I was using decided that it really had no intention of functioning correctly. It would work for several moments, stop altogether for a while, and then start up again. This resulted in my finished note looking like nothing more than a jumble of random ink streaks.

Seeing this, I took the pen and flipped it across my desk, where it bounced and clattered in a satisfactory manner. Without breaking the conversation, I picked up a new pen and finished the note.

This prompted my co-worker to say, “Wow, I’ve never seen you get mad before.”

It was true. I was mad. I hate pens that don’t work.

It’s also true that I normally don’t get mad. But, for some reason, faulty pens bring out that side of me.

This got me to thinking about what other things make me drop my mild-mannered persona and turn me into as much of a snarling, uncontrollable lunatic as I possibly can be.

Here’s what I came up with:

1) Golfing. I’ve never really golfed in my life. However, I have been to the driving range several times. In each case the range itself was about eight miles wide. However, I was still able to slice the ball off of it at a pretty regular frequency. (Or perhaps “hook” is the right term, or maybe “shank”. “Completely screw up” fits also.) Anyway, as I repeatedly did this, I found myself getting incredibly angry, which never happens to me, and it was, quite frankly, scary. I can’t imagine what would happen if I played 9 holes of real golf, although I’m sure it would end with me repeatedly striking a golf cart with whatever club had just shank-hooked my ball into a thorn thicket that was not even in the remote vicinity of where I had been aiming.

2) People that whistle. I mean seriously, who wants to hear you whistle? To me, it’s just a sign of a person who is so self-involved that they want everybody that walks by them to notice them and think to themselves, “Hey, that person is whistling!”

3) Sportscasters who overuse the word ‘unbelievable’. For example, if a baseball player makes a nice leaping catch over the fence and steals a home run, they will shout enthusiastically, “That was unbelievable!” However, this happens several hundred times per season. What’s unbelievable about that? Have they not watched any of these other games? The same applies to when a football player makes a one-handed touchdown catch. Sure, it’s a nice play, but it happens frequently enough that the term ‘unbelievable’ does not really apply. It makes me think that when these sportscasters see something mundane, like a vending machine dispense a candy car, they must jump up and down and yell to anybody who is near, “Did you see that! It was unbelievable!” The point is, you need to save ‘unbelievable’ for something that is truly unbelievable, such as if the Lions ever win the Super Bowl.

There's more, but I’d better stop now. I’m getting angry just thinking about this.