Rage

The phone rings. 

I pick it up.  Cell phone noise.  "Hello?"  No response.  "Hello?"  Nothing.  "HELLO!"  Click.

The phone rings again.  Cell phone noise.  "Hello?"

"Did Margaret call?"

I say I have to check.

She says "huh?"

In a firm clear voice I say I have to check.

She says "you'll have to speak up, I can't hear you."

In a very loud, very clear voice I say I have to check.

She says "it's really hard to hear you, please speak up."

I scream into the phone: "I'LL HAVE TO CHECK!" 

Without waiting for her response, I stomp over to her office, check her messages, stomp back to my office, pick up the phone and yell "NO!" in my loudest angriest voice, putting my all into it, really letting her have it, punishing her with one word for for all she is doing to me.

She says "I can't hear you, what did you say?"

I slam the phone down.

If I were a cartoon character, right now there'd be a bubble over my head filled with those squiggly scribbles.

It rings again.  ID says it's her.  I get up and stomp out of my office, slamming the door on her ringing.  People stare as I stomp down the hall, but I don't see them, my mental blinders focused only on finding a phoneless place to hide and lick my wounds.

Fifteen minutes later, sitting in the empty cafeteria with my head buried in my hands, my fragile inner peace shattered into thousands of jagged shards now grating against the inner walls of my head, inflicting thousands of tiny wounds that build in intensity as my head throbs with pain, the call replays over and over in my head while I shake with rage at the injustice of it all:  the casual rudeness of shifting the burden of a crappy connection to me, the futility of fighting the power, the stupidity of fighting a phone, the shame in allowing her to dictate my behavior.  And it occurs to me that there's something about rage that sends a torrent of prehistoric chemicals gushing through my body, potent and volatile, causing my face to flush, my head to throb and my blood pressure to surge into dangerous territory as my instincts prepare me for battle with an invisible enemy that, oddly enough, cannot see me or, by all accounts, hear me.

And then I realize what's going on -- I'm starting to vomit up all that stress I've been eating.  What goes in must come out.  It wasn't pretty going in and, now that I see it spewing out, I can assure you it only got uglier while bottled up inside me.  While I expel this foul stress from my system, blowing chunks of it around like shrapnel, I suggest you take cover from me and my terrible eruptions.

Comments

[David]

What are you going to give up to get out of there?

What is going to change if you stay there?

(These two questions are based on all considerations, in other words, I guess it is a job you need to support you and the family. So, the question might be, how many years of your life will you stay there? If not the rest of your life, what are you doing about it today. List the actions taken.)

D

[puddleglum]

thanks for touching on that feeling that shakes my core each time I hear a cell phone ring!!!!!