The water dispenser on our refrigerator has a broken spring. So if you push it, you then have to pull it back, like a barbarian, or it will keep running. And if you shut the door hard enough, it will start on its own, getting water everywhere. This morning, while unloading groceries, I shut the door hard enough to make the water run... three times. So I punched the fridge, the obvious offender deserving punishment. It's stainless steel. It left a dent and I'm currently icing my hand. Now you might be thinking that I should "just stop shutting the door so hard" or "just set it to 'ice' so it's at least easier to clean up." To which I say, "great ideas." Also, click here.
Now before you judge me for my apparent lack of self control, it’s possible that there is either a strong nature or nurture situation going on here since two of my siblings have the same very specific rage triggers and reactions. We’ve had them since we can remember. So if it turns out one day that, a la many alcoholics, I am more genetically prone to Hulk-smash the router when the wifi goes out, you won’t want to feel like a jerk.
Now before you say “oh yeah we’ve all been there,” allow me to illustrate my rage which, as far as I am aware, is the runaway winner for personality trait that is most embarrassing and often feels beyond my control:
As a young child, a toy wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. I couldn’t figure it out and I couldn’t move on. I instead boiled to frustration, grit my teeth, screamed, and literally tried to pull my hair out. My dad saw me and, noticing my irrational reaction, gave me a loving talk about being flexible to things not working the way that I want them to.
In high school I drove a 1978 Jeep CJ-7, awesome but old. After one string of resolved mechanical issues, I turned the key one morning, running late, and it wouldn’t start. What followed began as a simple punching of the steering wheel, standard and harmless protocol, crescendoed into a grab-and-scream (hold the wheel like bull horns, shake as hard as possible, hope that the world’s problems are solved by the time you're done), and finally climaxed with a few palm strikes to the windshield, spider-webbing the entire driver’s side, my scarlet letter. When asked what happened, “rock” was a no-brainer.
In college, I bought a new DVD player for a movie night with friends at our apartment (pre-Netflix chumps). Straight out of the box, it worked, as expected… until it didn’t. After a few minutes of frustrated troubleshooting/cursing, I got it working again. It played for a few minutes before a blue-screened error message appeared. I yanked it out of the wall outlet, opened the door to our second-floor apartment, and smashed it with all of the force that my being could muster onto the concrete steps below, plastic parts sent careening through the handrail posts to the sidewalk below. I got mixed looks of horror and joy, the latter from my roommates. They always loved to see a good Dustin freak-out.
Married, I spent a few hours trying to set up a printer at my father-in-laws office. Unsuccessful and in disbelief at the lack of success and waste of time, I resorted to my classic car rage while driving home, the first time my wife had really seen the full theatrical release.
This is a sample of hundreds. Luckily, my triggers are fairly consistent and rarely involve humans. And for me it's not really a problem. I feel better immediately afterward, like Will Ferrell yelling about the shed. But these triggers weren’t always so obvious to me. It took years of observation to realize that it isn't exactly “electronics” or “traffic” or “things not working,” but "something seemingly out of my control that isn’t going the way that I expected it to." With this diagnosis I’ve been able to manage it quite well by managing my expectations.
But once in a while a situation slips through the defense with such precision that I don't have time to see it coming and, before you know it, my quarterback is backpedaling and punching the fridge. In this case, my expectations about our rental’s property manager was my blind spot. One of the benefits of renting is not dealing with broken things. The fridge doesn’t work? Great, send an email and it’s fixed with Amazon Prime-like speed. That’s what I’m paying for after all. Except it’s been broken for weeks. So my unfulfilled expectation - that by renting I get a premium service - took about half a second to come to the surface, materializing into a fist to the fridge.
The author Yung Pueblo said, “Expectations cause great misery for the individual. We are constantly creating narratives of how we want things to be and how we want others around us to act. These narratives invariably lead to disappointment because the stories we crave are often dashed and broken by unrealistic expectations, circumstances beyond our control, and the randomness of the external world.”
This took me over 30 years to realize and I clearly haven’t fully internalized it. Hopefully over the next 30 I’ll get to a point where I can conquer any brand, shape, or size of refrigerator that life throws at me.
Comments