TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

It's All The Rage These Days

ADVERTISEMENT

By Norm Cukras | Highlands Today

Published: January 12, 2008

Last week I introduced my readers to what I referred to as "ring rage" that I defined as "how one feels when that little tab on the top of a can separates from the top before the top separates from the can and it takes a pair of pliers to get the top off and juice is spilled all over you in the process."

Rage is violent and uncontrollable anger. It goes beyond "What's bothering you?" or pet peeves, which usually invoke such responses as the rolling of one's eyes or audible tsking. But for the sake of this article we'll consider more drastic reactions to certain stimuli as "rages," which hopefully will not progress farther than being imaginary reactions.

Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

Spam-Rage: getting all those unwanted ads on the computer and not being able forward everybody else's Spam and your organization's request for a donation to the sender because you don't know who he is or where he lives which makes this rage all the more aggravating.

Cell-Rage: having to listen to those irritating personalized cell phone rings and listen to one-sided conversations about things better left unsaid and not being able to grab that instrument out of the evildoer's hand and squashing it under your heel.

Poli-Rage: this rage embraces the world of politics, especially during election time. Like Neptune's trident it has three points. There is the rage over the words spoken by candidates which if printed in 12-point type and laid side by next to each other they would cover the African continent; while only those covering a small village in Chad might be meaningful. Then there are the analysts who predict the outcome of elections based on the exit interviews of 18 farmers in a northern county of Vermont who took time off from harvesting maple syrup to vote and project that the candidate favored by the pre-voting survey will likely lose this election. And finally there are the politicians who are going to take their place in any seat of government to work for you. In Henry VI Shakespeare wrote, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Maybe he should have said politicians.

Seat-Rage: how many times have you had someone behind you that kicked the back of your seat? Wouldn't it be rewarding to be able to brand the bottom of their feet with a reminder that says, "I will not kick the back of somebody's seat ever again."

Comp-Rage: that series of frustrations that surface whenever your computer decides to do what it wants rather than what you want it to do. A simple solution is to nudge the metal manipulator with either a baseball bat or sledgehammer depending on which one is handier. Sadly this is a rather expensive way of trying to reprogram the thing. Of course the nudging method would open the door, and checkbook, for a new up-to-date model until you find that none of you accessories work with the new Vista operating system, which that introduces us to yet another rage category - Opsy-Rage.

Line-Rage: you get in line anywhere, usually the shortest, and the person in front of you turns out to be the slowest person on the planet. Wouldn't you love to beat them to the restroom and read your favorite novel while they waited in front of the locked door?

What's A Mother To Do?

I've simply touched the surface of the things that can change a relatively sane individual into a raging bull. The reasons for rages are about as varied as the people who demonstrate them. The fortunate thing is that they are fairly rare. And as difficult as it is we have to remember that as many times as we have sent to the brink of rage by someone we have probably done something that has driven someone else to the very same edge.

So have faith. In a short time you will home with you feet propped up watching you favorite program on your new HDTV.

Overheard

Overheard at the checkout counter: Let's go over to the fairgrounds today, get some great barbecue and ignore the fact that someone cut in front of you, got his ribs and dropped one on your sandaled foot - sauce-side down.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT