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Friday, April 14, 2006
I Need To Rant A Bit
The other day something happened that made me angry. As in flames shooting out my ears. However, I pretended that it was all good; I smiled, chuckled, made jokes. Funny thing about getting mad. We're all ashamed of it when we're angry. Like it's an admission of weakness. Or maybe we're just afraid to let outselves go for fear we won't be able to stop. Whatever. I was as mad as I've been in the last twenty years...at least. For two days afterwards, I kept imagining ideas about how to exact an appropriate revenge.
Here's what happened. Lydia/kids/I all walked to the dog park, well, Benny rode his bike. Once inside the park, poor little Porque Choppe was rushed off her feet by five dogs at once. She was scared and begged me to pick her up, which I did. The biggest dog would not accept that Porque was no longer available to be treated like a snack waiting to happen. I held Porque up over my head. The dog climbed right up me to get at Porque. I yelled and kicked at the dog. That made the dog angry at me so it situated it's excretory apparatus over the back of the baby's stroller beside me. Then it urinated at least a pint of doggie urine into the diaper bag, soaked everything. And then it turned to Benny's bike which it baptised in urine front to back. Lotta urine. Big dog. The two young men who own that dog thought it's behavior was hilarious. They laughed themselves red in the face. They did not call the dog, didn't yell at the dog, didn't apologize. They laughed.
Lydia got the dogs' big water pan filled with fresh water and sloshed it over the bike. The diaper bag was beyond our capacity to fix.
I thought of the movie, The Godfather, where the little man came to plead for revenge for his daughter. Poor guy, he knew that if the Godfather did something for him, he'd owe forever, but he needed that revenge so he stood humbly, hat in hand, "Godfather, please..." He got his revenge and it was sweet although it cost him bigtime.
So I imagined myself saying, "Godfather, there are two young men who allowed their dog to seriously disrespect me. And they laughed. Is there any chance that come Easter Day when they're all dressed up in new clothes to go see Mom, someone could hose them down with urine and then shut them up for a while in a small space partly filled with doggie doo? Oh, you could do that for me? Yes, I know it would mean that I'd have to do free legal work for you for the next two years, but it would be worth it."
Then I imagined myself making the kid next door an offer he wouldn't be able to refuse, "Bubba. Would you like to make some serious cash? Good. Here's what I want you to do. There's a house near here...I'll show you which one...and I want you to break into the car in the driveway. I'm going to give you a bucket of stuff I bought from the zoo. Uh, actually it's elephant doodoo mixed into a bucket of elephant urine. I want you to slosh that stinky stuff all over the front and back seats, then lock up the car again and go away. You'd do that for me? Good boy!"
The late great psychologist Hymie Ginott said that when we're angry, we should use a great deal of language, not just a few worn out pejoratives. He thought it therapeutic to have an angry person fully and completely explain all of his feelings, loudly, at great length, omitting no detail however minimal. Say it all. Tell the person who injured you exactly what you're thinking. I love this idea, but it wouldn't work as a universal palliative because so many people would run out of language before they'd completely aired their grienvance. They'd start hitting. However, it would be great for someone like me, a person who never runs out of something to say. If those two loutish young dog owners were forced to stand in front of me until I had entirely expressed my attitude toward their behavior, they'd be standing for a while...and it would make me feel a lot bettter. Isn't going to happen, of course, so if I can get the Godfather's phone number.....
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