Category: lessons in anger

Twinkie’s Temper Tremors.

A Lesson in Anger and Envy.

Twinkie Terwilliger had all the charisma of a dirty wet dishrag.  He took offense at anything that didn’t cater to his inflated sense of self-worth.  The moment someone failed to shower him with praise, acknowledge his so-called brilliance, or metaphorically place a sparkly golden trophy in his hand for simply being present, the subsequent scene was inevitable.  He couldn’t stand other people holding the limelight or doing something better than he, and his envy got the better of him.  His fragile-as-glass ego shattered into a million pieces, and therein the theatrics began.

His eyes bulged as if they might pop from their sockets, his face flushed a shade of deep red.  His entire body tremblef uncontrollably, reminiscent of someone in the throes of psychogenic tremors.  To the untrained eye, it might have looked like a medical emergency, but those who knew him understood that it was just another of Twink’s infamous tantrums.

As his voice rose, so did the drama around him.  He just had to be always be right, no matter the subject.  Everyone else was wrong in his mind.  He jabbed a trembling finger toward his supposed offenders, the veins in his neck strained with every shouted word, his bald head turned a bright beet red.  “There you go again!” he bellowed, and his voice cracked as if rehearsing for a poorly performed stage play in the junior high thespian club.  The words echoed sharply and accusatory, and it left his targets unsure whether to laugh, apologize, or simply walk away.

At workplace meetings, his fellow meeting-goers were drawn in by the commotion.  Their expressions were a mix of disbelief and thinly veiled amusement, and many were unable to suppress a smirk or guffaw.  Yes, they had seen this performance before, yet it still left them to marvel at the sheer cheekiness of it all.  Moreover, there was a certain dark humor to watch a grown man who’s sixty years old throw a tantrum that rivaled any spoiled toddler in a toy aisle.  Not a meeting went by where he didn’t scream and shout at perceived insults to him.  He also invariably imagined that he was insulted at every turn, for he had a serious paranoia problem.

When he was back in the neighborhood throwing tantrums, he had a personal crusader.  His father, whom everyone called “Papó,” inevitably stepped forward to be Twink’s personal crusader.  He completed the absurd tableau.  Papó nodded solemnly and would then puff out his chest past his beer belly.  His face wore a forced mask of indignation on behalf of his son.  “He’s just passionate,” Papó explained to the gathering, as though this outburst were some misunderstood acts of controlled brilliance.  He, defending his sixty-year-old child as if he were still a little boy on the playground, being teased for wearing a pink elastic eyeglasses retainer on his head!

The crowd would disperse, with knowing glances exchanged and whispers passed among them.  Meanwhile, Twink stood tall once more and basked in his father’s validation, as if he’s won a moral victory that rivaled Napoleon.  The storm would subside, until the next perceived slight against him stirred it anew with his temper tremors.

 

 

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Fritz-Udolph and the Silver Bolt.

Fritz-Udolph was awakened every night at 3 AM for two months by hard and rhythmic banging noises.  During those two months, he listened to that noise with wide-eyes and clenched fists while he lay in his bed.  He grew angrier by the night.  Finally fed up and disgusted with not knowing where the noise was coming from, he got out of his bed one thunderstormy night.  He slipped into his bright yellow chinoiserie silk robe printed with brown swallows and white magnolias.  He straightened his collar as he looked in the mirror and tied the belt into a sharp bow, slipped into his fur-lined leather slippers and started walking around his apartment.

He switched on the master bathroom light.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

He looked inside the sink cabinet and in the linen closet.  The noise wasn’t coming from anywhere in the master bathroom.  He stood in the bathtub, quietly listening for a long while.  He bit his lower lip and moved quietly to the guest room as his antique cuckoo clock chimed the quarter hour.  Of course, the banging continued.

“Bang, bang, bang!”

He slinked down the hall to the guest room.  The noise wasn’t coming from there, either.  He slid into the guest bathroom, stood in the shower stall and quietly listened.  He vaguely heard the banging but still couldn’t discern its origin.  He cleared his throat and rubbed his bearded chin.

Fritz-Udolph popped his hands into his robe’s pockets and tiptoed to the kitchen.  He flipped the light switch.  A couple of fruit flies from the bowl of ripening bananas flew past his face.  He grabbed a brown banana and ate it in three large bites.  Now the cuckoo clock chimed on the half hour, and there was more banging, this time a little louder and with a different tempo.

“B-bang, b-bang, b-b-bang, bang, bang!”

But the noise was too far away from the kitchen to come from there.  Feeling his face growing hot from anger, he tossed the banana peel into the garbage can and swatted five fruit flies as he closed the garbage can lid.  He marched into the living room.

“B-bang, b-bang, b-b-bang, bang, bang!”

The noise wasn’t coming from the living room, either.  “Strange,” Fritz-Udolph grumbled.  He stuck his head into the front hall closet and pushed aside his woolen capes and coats.

“B-bang, b-bang, b-b-bang!”

“Ah, ho!  There it is!” he exclaimed half-aloud.  “There it is coming from the next door!”  The cuckoo clock chimed on the three-quarter hour.  He rubbed his short grey beard, bit his upper lip and chewed on it for a long while.

“Bang, bang, bang!” the thuds echoed.  “Bang, bang, bang!”

Fritz-Udolph stood in the closet and listened.  “It is from the next door!” he thought.  “I will get the woman for this!”  By the time the cuckoo clock chimed four, the banging suddenly ceased.

“That’s it!” he grunted.  “I will show her, that infernal woman at the next door.  I will put an end to her discourtesy to me.”

The next morning, Fritz-Udolph called the management company and complained about his next-door neighbor.

“I tell you,” Fritz-Udolph shouted in his heavy German Swiss accent.  “You people must; I say MUST! put an end to my neighbor, Ramona, banging at three in the morning.  This has been going on for the two months.  I tell you, it is the hammer she is using.  I will not tolerate it.  I did an engineering study on this in my home country for a secondary school project, and I concluded no one could possibly bang all night long, ‘specially at three in the morning!  It is im-poss-ible!  It is the work of the succubus, that is what she is!  She will not seduce me, that Ramona, according to my proven engineering project!”

On the other end of the phone, the property manager smiled and half-giggled to herself.  She knew Fritz-Udolph didn’t make any sense, he never did, and that was par for the course.  She asked Fritz-Udolph if he had talked to his neighbor, Ramona, about the banging.  It was the better option, she explained, for opening the lines of communication between neighbors helps to foster goodwill.

“No,” he screamed.  “Why should I do that?  It is your job, fräulein!  Your job, not mine!”

The property manager rolled her eyes, took a puff from her joint, and promised she would contact his neighbor, which she did.  Through some investigation, the noisy problem was discovered.  It actually was a loose bolt from the fan that moved the air in the garbage room.  The garbage room was between Fritz-Udolph and Ramona’s apartments.

It turned out that Ramona never heard the noise because she was a heavy sleeper, and she slept wearing headphones.  She much preferred sleeping to the sounds of waterfalls than the noisy mechanics of the building.  Fritz-Udolph, on the other hand, was a light sleeper.  He could hear an ant crossing the grassy yard.

Fritz-Udolph was unfazed when he was told the noise was a fan bolt.  The building superintendent tightened it, and the noise was quelled.  Fritz-Udolph never apologized to Ramona for accusing her of something she didn’t do, nor did he feel remorse.  He was F.U., of course!

Fritz-Udolph’s complaint may have been addressed, but the way he handled it did little to cultivate even the thinnest thread of neighborly benevolence.  He passed Ramona in the hallway with theatrical grunts and mutters, while she, worn out by the whole affair, slipped past him with the quiet skill of someone avoiding a monster.

In the end, the whole episode left Fritz-Udolph with a lesson far quieter than the banging that had tormented him: life among neighbors requires patience that begins not in the hallway but in the heart.  What he mistook for another’s intentional rudeness had been shaped mostly by his own assumptions, his grand conceit, and his own certainty marching ahead of charity.  Yet, he never learned that peace within shared spaces depends on the intelligence to extend goodwill before judgment, to listen before accusing, and to soften the noise within before blaming the noise without.  He continued to accuse Ramona and other neighbors of deliberate peccadillos against him, and he continued to act with a haughtiness that only the most conceited of snobs could assemble.

 

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The Poverty of Perpetual Anger.

There is a particular sadness in watching people who live in a constant state of anger, and I see this quite a lot in my neighborhood, and especially since 2020.  Their anger is not the righteous anger that rises to defend the vulnerable, but the chronic, simmering kind; the kind that becomes a personality, a worldview, a permanent narrowing of the soul.  Some of these people turn ugly and violent when they are cordially greeted by neighbors.  These are people who treat every encounter as a contest, every disagreement as a threat, every difference as a personal insult.  Perhaps they believe they are defending themselves, but in truth they are defending the walls that imprison them.

Anger becomes their only vocabulary.  They speak it fluently, instinctively, even proudly, and peppered heavily with vulgar and filthy words.  But beneath that lies a deep poverty of spirit.  A person who must always be angry and offensive is a person who has forgotten how to be free and kind.

The tragedy is not merely that they harm others—though they do.  The deeper tragedy is what they lose within themselves without realizing it.

  • They lose the ability to be surprised by goodness.
  • They lose the capacity for joy that comes from generosity.
  • They lose the peace that only humility can give.
  • They lose the richness of a larger world than their own reflection.

They trade all of this for the brittle satisfaction of being “right” and boorish, even when that “rightness” isolates them.  They probably do not realize that the fortress they build to keep others out is the same fortress that keeps them in.

My sadness for them is not schmaltzy.  It is not the soft sadness of pity.  It is the sharper sadness that comes from recognizing wasted possibility.  These are people who could be expansive, curious, generous, a positive addition to the neighborhood, but instead they choose the cramped rooms of anger and rejection.  They choose to live in a world too small for any soul.  It is as though they are possessed by demons.

A life fueled by anger cannot lead to peace.  A heart closed to others cannot experience love.  A mind that rejects difference cannot grow.  They may cling to their fury and their narrowness as if these things protect them, but in the end, they protect nothing.  They only ensure that the person holding them remains untouched by the very things that make life worth living.

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