Thursday, March 11, 2010

Anger Management


My wife, a fourth grade teacher, sometimes rewards her students with a pizza party at school during lunch. Today was pizza party day. My wife, before she left for school this morning, asked if I would be kind enough to call in the pizza order for her because of her schedule today. I said, “No problem.” She said, “You can call it at 10am.” “I got it.” “Are you sure?” “Relax I got it.” “10 o’clock.” “Yep.”
Sometime after 9:30 my brother-in-law (the framer, he’s not working much these days either) stopped over. Evidently my son (the football player home on spring break) asked him to come over to workout (we have a pretty nice weight room in the basement). They asked if I wanted to join them and I said yes considering most of my lifting lately has been laundry baskets. Well we got a good workout in and I was feeling pretty good about myself all things considered……until I looked at the clock 11:37, almost time for luuunch. PIZZA oh no!!! Images of 16 hungry crying kids and a very angry wife passed before my eyes along with my wife saying, “I asked you to do ONE thing….” the words that every husband has heard and dreads.
I totally freaked out. Overreaction is an understatement. After it was over my brother-in-law said because of my reaction he thought I had forgotten to defuse a nuclear warhead.

My doctor warned me that stress is a serious issue for people who lose their jobs and it shows itself in strange ways. He says it’s not uncommon for men who are perfectly healthy otherwise to drop of a heart attack (he told me to take aspirin daily).
Stress is obviously showing itself in the over reactions I’ve been having. I have self-diagnosed the problem as a hypersensitivity to failure. Sometimes the reaction is anger, like the time I couldn’t get the wrinkles out of a linen shirt I was ironing and I almost smashed the iron. Or the time I tried to fold a fitted sheet and went looking for a pair of scissors to cut it into a million pieces. Both would have won on America’s Funniest Videos if the incidents were captured on tape.

I call it a hypersensitivity to failure because deep down losing a job along with the inability to pay the bills and foreclosure notices give me the feeling that I have failed. So any task that I do now that doesn’t meet my standards creates an overreaction.
The positive is that I am driven to prove myself and succeed which is why I’m tackling two Master’s programs.
To combat the stress I’m exercising more often and avoiding those things that frustrate me. I now send the shirts to the dry cleaner (expensive but cheaper than a shrink) and I don’t even attempt to fold the fitted sheet. I take it out of the dryer, flip it the bird and roll it up in a ball with a smile on my face.

I ended up driving to the pizza parlor and delivering the pizza myself to the school in enough time to be enjoyed before lunch period was over.

Mission accomplished…nuclear bomb defused.

1 comment:

  1. Oppenheimer,

    went to the range without you last night. Took the boys. We had one rifle, two handguns, the back pack with all the ammo and the eyes and ears.

    As i'm walking out the door carrying all the gear Jen hands me $20 and says buy me some lottery tickets!??? I should have just said "are you kidding me?" but like you I too have had my testicles removed with my amputation of my career.

    Of course, supervising two boys at the range is an episode in patience and after reloading all the gear back in the truck and speeding home becuase Von had to poop "really bad" i forgot the lottery tickets. Consequently I heard the inevitable “I asked you to do ONE thing….” and i tucked my tail between my legs and went back out.

    Unlike the pizza delivery i missed the purchase dead line by three minutes and ended up sleeping on the couch. In the morning i apologized and negotiating the tinkle sheets and the reapplication of the fitted sheet i believe i achieved detente.

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