a portrait of the artist as a young man (courtesy jeanmichel.mayer.free.fr)
Some people who know me will say nothing has changed. Well, then you never really knew me. It is nearly impossible to express the anger I had. As I look back I do not understand why. I do not understand how I lived like that.
Sure, I get ticked off still, but now it is more a passion that gets the better of me, which people with closed minds and narrow vision see only as anger and rage. I did not want to be that way in the past. I just did not really know any other way.
As a little kid, I was pretty much like every other little kid. I thought I was impervious to death, jumping across rooftops, hang-dropping from second and third story roofs. Playing with G.I. Joe. I had an awesome peg-legged pirate action figure too. (I do not know what happened to him. Too bad. He was cool.)
the awesome action figure (courtesy plaidstallions.com)
Street hockey, hide-and-seek, all the usual and not-so-usual stuff. However, I was something of a loner too, and maybe that is where it began. I do not know. My relationship with my parents was pretty average. It was my brother who was chased around the house with a leather belt, begging for mercy, after doing something dick-like. Even my relationship, until my late teens, was pretty average with my older brother.
Now, I was definitely bullied through school and maybe that too had a bearing on my anger. I definitely despise bullies of all types. I certainly cannot timestamp the moment when I became the none-to-muscular, albino hulk. All I can say is I transformed sometime when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. Then, it remained hidden most of the time. Sure, it came out when playing sports and a bad call was made against my team.
That is probably the first time I really lost control and revealed my rage. During a sporting event, probably soccer. I played in a league mainly based on nationalities. I played for Polonia Club and when we played the Italian or Portuguese teams, it was everything we could do not to descend into a riot. I do not think anyone knows why, it was just a primal and natural rivalry. It reached a point that my team did not care how well we did in the season, just as long as we did not lose to the "wops" or "pork chops". What a bunch of knuckleheads we were.
As I nurtured this hostility, I began channelling it into argumentative discourse. I read a lot when I was younger. I read non-fiction for fun. I would research to death a topic at the library. This was pre-interweb days remember. I would argue with anyone, even if I agreed with them. I even managed to get people to change their opinions and then argue again to change it back. Yet, I never joined a debating club. Funny.
The darkness grew inside. Then, when I was eighteen, I met someone who asked me why I was so angry. No one ever really did ask me before. I could not answer the question. I liked this person. Now, of course, I did not stop being angry because of this. However, this person saw so much more in me than just the rage. We started dating, pretty much right away. When my rage boiled to the surface, she seemed to know when to try to calm me down or let me go on, and on, and on. Most of the time anyway.
I screwed the pooch the first year of university and bounced a bit and then ended up in a program I wanted to take. That negativity I embodied began to transform into an energy for less aggressive debate and discourse. By the time I hit my mid-twenties I was definitely a less unhappy person. I would actually contemplate this fury. Honestly, to this day I have no idea why it consumed me so. I have never really done anything horrible while in this state, except to upset people.
Early thirties, I married that woman I met at eighteen. In Vegas. By an Elvis impersonator. I was definitely a more happy person. More than ten years and a kid later, I would say I am a pretty happy individual. Do a lot people still piss me off? Sure. Do I ramble on about it? Sure. Do I want to go all hulk about it? No. I just wish those people would get the oatmeal out of their heads and realise that they are off base with what they are saying or doing. Oh yeah, I can still get pretty uptight while driving, but there are no Streets of San Fransisco car chases anymore. Yes, there were car chases.
Honestly, if it were not for that girl I met all those years ago who saw something in me, I cannot say what I would be today. I am sure glad she saw more than the blackness that consumed me. I cannot express in words what my life with her, and the boy, means to me. I have come to realise, for whatever reason, that I have been saddled with this energy and I must learn to channel it. I certainly am not that dark young man anymore, but when Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner says, "That's my secret Captain. I'm always angry." Boy do I get it. My Geek Wisdom has a short but interesting analysis of that very line.
you do not want to see me get angry. (i have a shirt just like that.)
So, what to do then? As something I saw painted on the back of a dump truck years ago and embodied by the Penguins of Madagascar, "Just smile and wave (boys), smile and wave." It works when I remember. I wish I had that on a crest to sew on my Scouter's uniform. blbbl
one last gratuitous image (snarfed from ebay)
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