It’s one thing to get yelled at ‘cause you forgot to check your blind spot, and cut someone off while barreling down the highway at 60 miles per hour.
That’s a lot like being yelled at for spilling grape juice (if you’re Baptist) all over someone’s white, silk shirt.
It’s uncomfortable. And embarrassing. But not entirely undeserved.
But, let me tell you, it’s another thing entirely when someone interrupts your morning McDonald’s run by rudely yelling out the window. “Come on. Hurry up! Get going. I don’t have all day!”
I was innocently counting my change, collecting the $1.08 it takes for a sausage biscuit, when the rotund woman behind me shoved her head out her window and proceeded to verbally assault me for taking twenty whole seconds to span the 8 foot gap between me and the bumper in front.
I was livid.
In fact, driving away from the scene, feelings unreasonably hurt and fattening breakfast sandwich in hand, I kept looking back at the drive-thru.
I really, really wanted to yell back. Or worse.
I wanted to ruin her day the way she had ruined mine.
I wanted... Justice. Or vengeance. Or good-old-fashioned revenge. The kind best served cold, or on an overly dramatic ABC show.
But mostly… I wanted… to harbor anger, toward the unkempt, portly woman behind me in line. The one who just had to order her hashbrowns, large Coke and sausage McGriddle (“That’s the one with the syrup built in?” her abrasive voice asked loudly over the intercom.). She wanted those things that second. And I was an inconvenience and nuisance to be dealt with.
I wanted to throw my hands in the air and ask “Reeaaaallly?” in my best Kermit voice. “What is the world coming to?” (Possibly while throwing a packet of strawberry jam at her window.)
Instead, I drove off silently, sans jelly thanks to my inability to think straight, and I visually stalked her until I was halfway to work. I just kept checking my side mirror every few seconds like a compulsion – a tic – overjoyed that each time I checked I saw her, still at the very first window, undoubtedly counting change the way I had been when she went bonkers on me.
I wonder if someone behind her rushed her to hurry up. Or if the cashier rolled her eyes the ways I wanted to. I wonder… if it is amazing or scary how much something as small as an unpleasant exchange at a fast-food chain can alter my reality.
It can beckon me to give in to the worst suggestions in my head, the ones that call for tantrum-like behavior befitting a two-year-old, the kind that lands adults in mandatory anger management classes.
How crazy that my threshold for rudeness is so low, that something as minor as a Mickey D run-in would seriously have me contemplate what I’d generally consider unthinkable behavior.
But then again, I’ve gotten just as mad at even less. (And every time I ever shopped at Wal-Mart.)
Can my character be so weak, that I’d really punch a woman’s glasses off just for hastening my drive-thru experience? I didn’t – but by golly I WANTED to.
I think part of what makes me so incredibly inept at handling even the tiniest disappointments, is that for most of my life I have convinced myself that I am not supposed to get upset.
As an incredibly shy elementary student, the kind that sat quietly and did her work, I was quickly labeled a “Good Girl” by teachers and peers. And even after rebelliously ripping that nametag off sometime in high school, deep down I knew I was still considered that silent third-grader in the bottle-thick glasses. It was as if the residue from the nametag was still stuck to every Tigger sweatshirt I donned. (Mayybeeee wearing clothes from The Disney Store as a freshman helped perpetuate the stereotype. Who knows?)
I was expected to be quiet. And polite. And to do my work diligently without reminder. I was expected to play the part I’d given myself, the one of the girl who was always prepared (with extra pencils and paper, my trusty arsenal for making “friends”). I pretended that I was just a peaceful person, one that managed to avoid much of the drama that sends junior high girls to the bathroom with mascara stains running down their faces, and junior high boys being drug by the ears to the principal’s office, blood dripping below their noses.
But deep inside I knew better. I wasn’t a peacemaker. I was a pushover.
A pushover that would retire the Tigger sweatshirt (or make it a sleep shirt at least), but not the attitude, that it’s never okay to be mad. Ever. So feelings like that must be buried.
At some point, most kids learn healthy ways to deal with their anger. At least I’d really like to believe that. I do feel that people like me – the extremely passive aggressive – are a minority. God I hope so anyways.
But it’s probably more accurate to say that most of us get bigger, without really knowing how to cope with anger – justified or not – the way mature adults do.
Sure, we might scrape by without imprisonment, or ending up in epic cat fights, the likes of which are constantly being replayed on Bravo. But we don’t really handle our anger. We just hide it better than others.
Maybe we gossip about it over work lunches. Maybe we hide voodoo dolls in all our desk drawers, with straight pins ready for inflicting pain at a moment’s notice – or another reminder to turn in our TPS reports.
Maybe, we bottle it up, ‘til it comes boiling to the surface, only to explode onto some innocent passerby. Or, maybe we bottle it up ‘til it implodes within us, leaking the emotional equivalent of gunky old Coke, the kind that can decompose rat bodies if left long enough.
Maybe, we take our anger out on people smaller and weaker than us, ‘cause that’s how it was displayed when we were small and weak.
Maybe, we get really really good at pretending it doesn’t exist. Maybe even so good that we start to feel like we don’t exist.
Maybe.
I think the best anger management advice I ever received, was from a high school volleyball coach. I had been berated pretty badly by one of the other coaches, and was (NOT surprisingly) taking it pretty hard.
“Like water off a duck’s back,” he said. “That’s how you have to take it.”
I had no clue what he meant. I just giggled, which was a pretty regular occurrence since my friend and I thought he was cute.
Yearrrrrs later, though, I understood what he meant. (I think!)
Some things, you just have to let go of. You have to let them flow right over you, or under you, or through you, or whatever it takes so that they don’t stop you. So you don’t drown under the weight of the words.
You have to “just keep swimming,” to put it simply.
I did get something cold this morning. But it wasn’t revenge. It was the sausage biscuit I had, myself, been so desperate to order. The one that sat on my desk while I retold my tale to two coworkers. And, while I bitterly replayed the situation a dozen more times in my mind.
I watched it like a B movie that you hate, but can’t seem to change. You know it’s a waste of two hours of your life, but you really want to see which mutant animal comes out on top – the squid or the octopus.
Only in my personal montage, it was me vs. the Sausage McGriddle lady. And replayed, I almost always won the battle if not the war.
That was my morning, going over and over the horrid details of the ordeal. Until, finally calming down enough to eat my mediocre and very cold dish.
Even now, I really WANT this to be a funny story. I want to mock that woman mercilessly, and talk about how I should have learned a long time ago to lower my expectations when it comes to McDonald’s.
I want to be charming about the whole thing, and make it clear that I realize that this was not a huge deal.
The problem – the real one – is that in my mind it was and is. It’s a big deal to be yelled at without just cause. But it’s a much bigger deal to not have a clue how to respond, not just to unreasonable (borderline wacky) outbursts, but to legitimate complaints as well.
Not having developed proper ways to manage anger, especially at this stage in life, is pretty problematic.
If only I had a life coach to tell me, “Like water off a duck’s back.” To ride in the car with me, and go grocery shopping with me, and generally help keep me from losing it...
I guess I’ll have to settle for reminding myself of that old life lesson. And, praying for a little more grace next time, for dealing with the “stupid idiots” as my husband lovingly calls them.
**Thankfully, my story has a semi-happy ending. I discovered some jelly stored away in my snack drawer. I guess what's saved for a rainy day can serve for a rocky day too.
And, I want to acknowledge that it wasn't McDonald's fault I had the encounter. (They put plastic in my oatmeal one time, but they gave me coupons for the mishap. Plus they've never yelled at me! So there's that. Consider this your glowing referral Mickey D's. Glowing.)
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