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blogging101, Family, Journaling, Memories & Reflections, Uncategorized, Writing 101, Writing Prompts
I don’t remember what I was frustrated about. I just remember doing dishes with a vengeance. I was plunking them in the water hard, scrubbing the hell out of them and practically throwing them into the other sink to be rinsed. I had my dish drainer sitting on dishtowels which left room around the plastic drainer to sit dishes as well.
When I rinsed, I rinsed hot and hard. I filled the dish drainer with plates, and glasses, and silverware, hung cups around the outside of it, then stacked other suckers up all around that drainer on the towels.
I remember having music playing. I like to listen to classical music when I’m doing dishes, it chillaxes me. So I started with the outside row on the towel and began drying and putting away. I thought I was calming down. I SEEMED to be calm and no longer angry. But then I got to the last things, the plates. I took the end one to dry and the rest of them all fell over. That aggravated me. I set them all back up again and took the next one. The rest fell over again. I repeated that little scenario till there were only two plates left and the same thing kept happening.
The battle was on! No matter how many times I sat that second-to-the-last plate upright, it kept falling over. And I got angrier and angrier by the moment until I could have steamed cleaned the carpet with what was coming out of my ears! And it wasn’t just INNER turmoil. I was hoppin’ up and down and cussing at that plate like a bully in the school yard! Then I took it and with every ounce of rage in me I chucked it on the floor. (It was 30-year-old melmac. It didn’t break.)
That stopped me cold and I asked myself what the hell I was doing. I think it’s interesting that I don’t remember what I was mad about. All I remember is my angry and abusive behavior with that poor plate. That was a big day for me. My mom had anger management issues. And though she never laid a hand on us physically, we knew good and well when she was ready to pitch a fit.
I stopped in that moment to ask myself if I ever treated my kids that way. Thankfully, the answer was no — as far as I knew. But it did make me wonder if I ever came across as that angry to or at them.
I was very conscious of any irritable or angry behavior after that. It changed me. I don’t know why it happened that day or happened the way it did, but I knew after that overly-dramatic moment with a plate that I didn’t want to be like that with my family. Some of my homies might tell you I’ve done a 180° and now I put up with way too much. But if I had to pick one or the other, I’m still enough of a drama queen without the mega anger issues!
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DAILY PROMPT: Dramatic
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Picture Credits:
washing dishes — www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com
dish drainer — global.rakuten.com
melmac dishes — www.terapeak.com
anger — www.123rf.com
Impromptu Promptlings 
I am pretty sure that plate bore the brunt but had absolutely nothing to do with your anger. You have had a lot going on with your brother in law. Let’s blame that.
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Well it MIGHT have had something to do with my b-i-l, but that happened about 25 years ago. Of course he has always been somewhat overbearing! (Yes, same b-i-l. 🙂 )
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So get that! When I was young I threw things! But it felt so good to do so. I never hit or hurt anyone. EVER. Coming from a both physically and mentally abusive family so I’d made up my mind early on that I would never discipline in anger. The throwing was because I had a straying husband that I couldn’t communicate with. Once I learned to express myself and (dumped the jerk) it passed and I never did it again. If you get a chance, there’s a scene in a movie called “Tortilla Soup” that depicts how good it feels to break something…and not on anyone’s head either.
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Tortilla Soup, eh? I’ve never heard of it. I’ll have to look it up. You know, I’d never (outside of my toddler years) thrown anything before. Whatever the cause was, it must have been the angriest I’d ever been. Truth is, it scared the bloomin’ tar out of me. Glad you got out of that situation, Jolie. Gosh, I know so many people on here with that same story. It’s like an epidemic.
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Yes, sadly things have “evolved” these days that honor is practically no existent, but even that is fixable and if not, you move on. Life’s too short to be miserable.
You are right, when you do something that is out of character for you, it is very alarming, but think of it as a good thing. It’s a form of checks and balances to your core being.
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You’re absolutely right. Those kind of lessons are hard to forget.
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Oh I’ve had moments 😬
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My dad had a volcanic temper, and usually when he blew somebody innocent got the short stick.
Once he flew into a rage at dinner time, and he banged his fist so hard on the table that the salt-pot leapt off the table and went down the back of my brother’s neck! Unlikely as that sounds, it’s true.
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Did you dare laugh or would that have made him even angrier? Drollery’s dad had a horrible temper. Especially when he’d been drinking. One night when the kids were fairly young (there were eight of them) a kitten they had adopted jumped up on the dinner table and Dale picked up his steak knife and skewered that kitten right in front of them all. Talk about traumatized. His dad wasn’t a nice man.
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That’s horrible! I thought he came from a mormon background – surely a mormon would not do that unless he was deranged?
No, we didn’t laugh. We would have risked a swift wallop – unless it had been my brother Fenton, his favourite. Even now my eldest brother looks timid when it’s mentioned. It was his neck that it went down, and he froze.
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I don’t blame him. Had to be a bit of a surprise, eh? (Yes, Drollery’s family is LDS. He left years ago.)
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“[…] doing dishes with a vengeance.” What a wonderful collection of words.
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I only do that now when they pile up for a couple days! But my motivation is disgust not anger! LOL
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Anger is rarely beneficial to anyone – though there are the odd occasions when a good outburst clears the air. I think that teaching taught me that if you lose it you lose.
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I get that. Drollery and I are talkers. We talk, talk, talk. But there ARE times when we still need to talk pretty loudly to make each other heard! Those times can be therapeutic!!! Wrote a poem about that on here recently… 😀
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Wow – that’s some volcanic eruption you had! And a lesson you’ve never forgotten.
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No, I never did. Isn’t it odd though that the reason for the anger totally escapes me?
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Sometimes it’s a little thing that tips the balance of a whole lot of little things that have built up over time.
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Nice post, it’s amazing sometimes what a silly thing can set us off. Your writing made me feel as though I was there beside you doing the dishes.
Happy days writing.
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Be thankful you weren’t. Be VERY thankful! It wasn’t pretty… 😦
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Smiles.
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