Lately I have been feeling a lot of empathy for Donald Duck. He gets so angry that it's funny. Well, that's how I get during allergy season, and it isn't funny. I don't know what it is about pollen, but my temper is on a hair trigger. Not that I don't have legimate reasons to get angry. Just this morning the check-out clerk at the grocery store dawdled along asking the customer in front of me whether she wanted paper or plastic, or perhaps both! There I am, the precious seconds of my life slipping away for nothing because nobody else bothers to bring their own bag to the grocery store. (What? Do they think that paper grows on trees? Don't they know that plastic never breaks down in the waste stream?) On the other hand, I have to admit that temper tantrums are kind of funny- not mine, of course, but most people's. Once I watched one poor flustered soul at the movie theater try to make the teenager in the ticket both change corporate policy by taking money off the price because he brought his own 3D glasses from a previous showing. The teenager, new to the adult practice of trying to use logic to fight a corrupt system, did his best to explain that the price was the price. I sympathized with both sides, but the angry guy did look a little silly in spite of his best effort to stalk into the theater as though he had at least made his point. The teenager looked a little shell-shocked at winning an argument with an adult. I do my best to keep perspective this time of year when I'm so touchy. It's hard to walk that fine line between questioning whether I'm being shown proper respect and letting my wrath break through the fog of stuffed, achy brain and express itself in squeaks of outrage from my inflamed vocal cords. I shudder to think what would happen if anyone laughed. |
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