Got Feedback?
Send a letter to the editor.

Subscribe now: RSS news feed, plus free headlines for your site

Remembering rages past

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, April 30, 2007

 E-mail this page    Printer-friendly page

I got mad today. It was somewhere between a snit and a towering rage. It’s difficult to quantify anger, even my own anger, even to myself.

The anger was directed at a research website I wanted to use. It required that I register to use its resources. I did, and got a message saying an e-mail would be sent to the address I had provided, and when I answered it, I’d be able to log in and use the service.

I waited. No e-mail. Maybe I typed in the wrong e-mail address, I thought. Back to the site to check my information. It was perfect. Back to Thunderbird to check my junk mail folder and make sure their e-mail didn’t end up there, although Thunderbird has never sent anything to junk without being asked. No e-mail there either. I have another e-mail address. Maybe that one would work for some reason I don’t understand, I thought. Back to the Website, to change the e-mail address on my account.

I waited. No e-mail. Perhaps, I thought, they have dispensed with the confirmation e-mail process, and I am already registered. Back to the Website, where I try to log in. “Your account is not activated,” the site informs me. A button asks whether I want them to send me another confirming e-mail. Yes, I reply with a click.

I waited. No e-mail. I went through this process three times, without any joy. I decided to tell the Webmaster his or her site was busted. I searched through the “help” menu until I found “Contact us,” and clicked there. A box opened with two buttons—one for those already registered, and one for those not yet registered. I clicked the latter and got a box that said, “To register, click here.” I backed up and clicked the other button, for those already registered. “Your account is not activated,” a box told me. “Would you like us to send another confirming e-mail?”

By then I was so mad I wouldn’t have used their stupid service if they had sent me money. The worst part was having no way to tell them how disgusted I was. I did make a few comments aloud. The dogs heard them. Little dog got up and moved away from me. Big dog thumped her tail (when I really am mad at her, that always works). And, if the gris-gris worked, that site’s Webmaster suffered the blue screen of death simultaneously with a large boil.

I stayed mad for an hour or so, off and on. As the anger tapered off, I started to wonder if I get madder when there’s no one to blame or, in this case, no way to express my anger to the blameworthy. When I get hurt—say, ramming my smallest toe into a table leg, or hammering a finger, or cutting my foot on a desiccated Rice Krispie (yeah it happened, but it was long, long ago in the days of shag carpet)—I experience a flash of blind, unreasoning anger. In my younger day, those flashes could make me kick the offending table (particularly stupid, as you simply hurt yourself twice), hurl the hammer (you get to buy more Sheetrock and do this all over again), or swear a blue streak (an acceptable response, unless small children are present).

I rarely have such violent urges when people make me angry—although a few have distinguished themselves by causing me to swear blue streaks. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I get madder when there’s no one to blame (but me). It may only mean pain makes me angrier than provocation.

That led me to try and quantify my anger, with the results you read in the first paragraph. How mad did that Website make me? The only way to quantify it would be on a scale, and the only comparison data available is how angry I was at other times in my life.

That’s when I discovered that I can’t recall other angers I have experienced. In some cases I can recall the actions, words, or events that made me angry, but even the ones I can remember don’t evoke anger anymore. Some, honestly, are quite funny now.

In addition to shoring up that old “count to ten” rule, this is going to cause me, next time I get angry, to wonder how long I’ll be able to remember whatever it is I’m angry about—and whether it’s worth getting angry at all.

 E-mail this page
 Printer-friendly page