Anger management! I don’t need any f#*king anger management!!

I wouldn’t be angry…

Anger has always been an arrow in my quiver of life tools. Shit, under such an analogy, to be quite honest, anger is probably the bow. I’m not entirely sure why. I would like to say that there was some sort of trigger, but I don’t know that there was. Maybe there were a few agitators that took things up a level, but somehow, I think anger was always there, sort of just simmering on the back burner ready to move to the front of the stove at any moment. “Whenever you’re ready to explode I’m here for you, just let me know champ.”

The firework memory that brings me to anger involves a kickball game. Which makes sense I think. The neighborhood kids and I were playing kickball in our street. We lived on an amazing street for a childhood to unfold to be honest. It was a street at the very end of a development that looped back around to the front of the development, so cars aren’t really driving by unless it’s someone that lives on the street. Very quiet and on the side of the street opposite our house there was a big ravine behind the homes that stretched for miles, so it was like a childhood adventure land. There were a good number of kids in the neighborhood at all levels of age. Honestly, I’m not sure there would’ve been a much better scenario for a childhood of exploring and friendship.

…if you just let me pitch bitch…

So on this particular day I recall that I really wanted to “pitch” on my team. I want to say I was about 7 or 8 years oldish, and I probably wasn’t great at pitching. I think my best friend’s older brother was pitching and he was pretty damn good at it. I know, not like there is some crazy skill with rolling a ball so some other kid could kick it, but I want to say that this kid could put spin on it and all sorts of other weird stuff that just made it more effective. Well, I think the team turned down my request, might’ve been a demand, to be pitcher. As a result I lost it, I think I went ape shit in just an immature, illogical, nonsensical manner. All kinds of obscenity pouring out of my mouth, eff this, eff you, eff everything. The game was taking place right in front of my house so I started to cry as I was overcome with angry emotion and walked up my driveway to go into my house as I think I was still telling everyone that they could also go home, and when they got there they should take some time and go eff themselves some more.

…*%*@#($#$*@#$ yourself…

So I get up to my front door where there are a bunch of bushes and trees that sort of hide the door. For some reason, I’m guessing asshole remorse and fear for what had just transpired and poured from my mouth, I decided to crouch down behind the bushes to see what would happen. I think the kids there were still sort of shocked by all that had just occurred and were starting to play again when my friend, the Nolan Ryan of kickball pitchers that I was trying to oust, stopped and said, “Hey guys, you want to go tell my Dad on him?” At that point everyone agreed that was a real good idea, some of the kids ears probably still burning from the obscenity that had come out of my more than slightly white trash mouth. This only encouraged my enrage some more and so I stood up and once again told them all they could go eff themselves, for good measure. I think in my mind none of this was much of a problem because I wasn’t ever going to speak to these yahoos again anyway, so feel free to go tell your Dad. To note, the Dad in question was my best friend’s Dad who played an extremely large role in my childhood. Not only was he my best friend’s Dad but he was also a genuinely good man, very respectful, funny, kind, a great father, all of the good stuff. So them threatening to tell him wasn’t like they were just telling any old schmoey Dad, it likely hit me a bit that I was about to be a disappointment to that man as well. However, in my mind it only seemed to solidify further the childish thought that I was never going to speak with these people again. I hadn’t planned on ever seeing or speaking with any of you a couple moments ago, despite the fact that we are so engrained in each other’s lives through living 100 feet away from each other, school, sports, school bus riding, parental friendships, etc. that it would be absolutely impossible to accomplish, but now that you were telling on me as well, you can really all go hump your mothers you bunch of mother humpers.

…my bad…

So they go tell on me and that’s that. Our lives would never cross again, well, that is, until later that afternoon, I think, when we decide to just get past it all and be all best buddies again. No kidding, I literally think it was later that day that we decided to put it all to rest. I do however remember my best friend saying to me, as I was going over to his house, I think we were going to go in and watch tv or something, probably going to watch some sweet ass movie like White Water Summer, that his Dad was probably going to have to say something to me regarding the use of George Carlin’s vocabulary that I decided to display earlier. I was like, ok, that’s understandable. A reasonable man. I came across his father in their backyard as I think we decided to go back there where he was working on the yard and just address it head on. He told me that the language I had used was unacceptable, to which I generally concurred and we went on about our lives. I didn’t get into the fact that such language was really commonplace amongst all of us, but on this occasion it was my turn and responsibility to take the hit. I had lost it and it was on me this time. No use getting into a he said, she said, they said, you said type situation. Face up to it like a boy who wanted to go watch a movie.

It’s funny because this recollection caused me to remember something else that has almost nothing to do with this. If you’ve read any of the entries prior to this one then I would say this is probably not surprising. As I’ve said many times before, this recollection should be, is, will be, a part of another entry in some way or form, but to follow this honestly I have to give a piece of it here. I’ve wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember (right now everyone is like, holy shit, I thought this thing was getting close to finishing up, not just getting started, don’t worry, that’s more or less all I’m going to say about that), but I really didn’t get on stage in a meaningful way until I was something like a Junior or a Junior and a half, or some shit like that, in college. I was always way too busy, I typically had multiple jobs and was taking more credits than any sane human being should be taking at any one time. So to dip my toe into the water I decided to audition for a one act play (that’s digestible, I can handle one act right). It was called (fuck, what was it called????), it was called (seriously can’t remember…), it was called something like The Circus or some shit like that. It definitely wasn’t called The Circus. Ah, YES, it just came to me!!!! Ignore the last three sentences…So I auditioned for this cool, unforgettable, one act play called The Shooting Gallery. So in this play I pontificate as a man trying to win his wife a goldfish at a shooting gallery, only I’ve been shooting for a long, long, long time and I’m just spouting off about a number of idiotic things. Man I fucking love acting. Sorry, just looking back and recalling pieces of this thing. So anyhow, open to the opening weekend and my best friend comes to the show and watches, and he says after watching the performance, which admittedly was a pretty damn good one, he says, and I remember it crystal clear, like a firework, he says, “That was really good, but you’ve always been good at anger.”

…but I got anger skills…

I’ve always been good at anger. I find on an almost daily basis that anger can eat me up, literally it feels like being eaten up, like once I get in it I can’t shake it. Think about pretty much any decent werewolf movie you’ve ever seen where the fella goes from this normal human being to then being uncontrollably overcome with a totally different thing. You could share a funny story with me and if I’m residing in my internal angry mood I will go out of my way to not find it funny. It’s a death spiral. If you see me and I’m a total asshole to you or just seem like an absolute dead beat sack of shit, you should know that I’m probably pissed off. You should also know I’m not at all, probably, pissed off at you, but I guess, and there’s some depth to explore here big time, I’m likely insanely, illogically (maybe not all that illogical, damn it Hyde can you go away for right now I’m trying to finish this), unequivocally pissed off at myself. I’m difficult, and I’m not sure if I’m saying that to you or to me right now.

So not sure what all of this look back is teaching me, but I can tell you that having started this entry in an extremely angry mood I’ve started to work my way out of it by the mere fact that I sat down and wrote and that I also put on some music. So if I’ve just discovered that writing and listening to music are ways to break my anger funk than this entry will have been the most useful entry of all of the entries to date to be honest. The other thing that I’ve found some sanity in, maybe some quiet and some empathy is the simple idea that I recently came across via some podcast or some shit that says something like, talk to yourself the same way you would talk to your kids. Wow…that’s some powerful shit. So when thinking about my forever and constant pent up anger I can’t help but to think of my son, whom I’ve said, on more than one occasion, is the only other person that I’ve seen get as so impressively pissed off at an inanimate object as I have. The only difference is that my anger to that extent really didn’t achieve those levels until maybe my twenties, and I’ve seen his start at about age three. So what would I tell my child? So many things, some of which I’ve said, including the fact that I know what it’s going to be like to follow that path, and it’s going to be tough, that anger typically does not, and by typically does not I mean absolutely never, result in a solution or a happy outcome or an outcome that isn’t even more self destructive than the situation you’ve already put yourself in. I would tell him the simple truth that life’s too short, don’t spend your time being angry, spend it being open, spend it bringing joy, not sucking it up. It is these things that I would, that I will, say when I watch the replication of what I view as being eerily familiar (where am I and how did I get to this point within this entry???!!?!?!).

…to hopefully stop the anger.

So as I sit here completing this particular entry (Yeah!!!!) I have Bruce Springsteen on Broadway on in the background…again (it’s my go to if I want to roll around in my past for a while), and he just unleashed a quote that was once again as if he was speaking directly to me. Understand that I literally started it wherever I had last left off, which was probably months ago, and it was well over half way through, but one of the first thing he’s talking about at the part of the show that started is the affect a parent can have on a child. He says, and I quote:

Here in the last days before I was to become a father my own father was visiting me to warn me of the mistakes that he had made and to warn me not to make them with my own children. To release them from the chain of our sins, and my fathers, and mine, and our fathers before, that they may be free to make their own choices and to live their own lives. We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children’s lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them, and we haunt them or we assist them in laying those old burdens down and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior and as ancestors we walk alongside them and we assist them in finding their own way and some transcendence.

-Bruce Springsteen-

Holy shit, I have no idea how I got to here from kickball, but I’ll take it. I’ll take it and breathe it in and learn from it to try to make tomorrow better than today, for me, and, most importantly, for them.