Temper, temper....

So I have to explain a few things before I explain a few other things before I get to the meat of this blog so sit down and make yourself comfortable...

Every sport has its own oddities about it. Not just in playing but in watching. Baseball has its statisticians who keep track of not only the score but how many at bats and swings and times people spit. Different teams have different traditions and songs they sing. And there are things that you just don't know unless you are a fan and go to games. One of those things in hockey is that you don't stand up. Unless a goal was just scored or a fight is happening or there is a stoppage in play for something else you keep your butt in the seats.

Depending on the configuration of the stands in some barns you don't even lean forward in your seat. The reasoning is pretty simple, if you are standing up in front of me, ever if you are a few rows in front of me, you are blocking a section of the ice. Hockey is a fast game and if you can't watch it all happening you are going to miss something. Hockey fans take this pretty seriously. If you bring someone new to a game you need to tell them, yes, it's exciting, yes you are going to want to get up and shout, but then you must sit right back down.

Here in Portland during the Timbers' off season the Timbers Army will buy a block of tickets and come to the game. Now soccer is completely different. Especially for the Timbers Army.  They stand the whole game. They wave flags. They chant. They sing. They have choreography. And when they come to a Winterhawks' game they have their own section above everyone else where they can stand and chant and wave their flags and have a good time without making the hockey fans crazy. Because there are certain hockey fans that will go absolutely crazy if you don't sit down.

So last night at the game there were these two guys about 5 rows in front of us who were new to the game. You get that a lot during the playoffs.  It's fun to watch a team on the march to victory without having to slog through the whole season with them. And as is the case quite often, going to game for them also meant drinking a ton of beer. So they were having a great time, more than a little drunk, and completely unaware of how much they were starting to tick off the people behind them. And then once they were aware they were drunk enough to get belligerent about it. "I'll stand if I want..." Well so the fans that go crazy? Yeah...not a good idea....

What started as a simple, "Sit down." became a more pronounced "SIT DOWN!" then on to a tossing of candy at the back of one of their heads with a "SIT DOWN NOW!" and it went from there. Then it was a guy in front of us launching an empty candy box at the guy a few rows down screaming "SIT THE FUCK DOWN!" Then it got intense...

So the candy box hit the drunk guy and another guy four seats over starts screaming about assault and that he's going to call the police. Seriously, dude? Assault? And who are you again? And why are you now standing up and screaming when there are still four minutes to play? So then the guy in front of us and the guy who is going to call the police and the two original drunk guys are all going at it. And the guy in front of us starts to strip.  Off comes the watch, the wallet and phone get handed over, the necklace is removed, the sweater he was wearing over his t-shirt comes off and his girlfriend is taking everything and putting it in her bag.  This tells me a couple of things, this is not his first rodeo. And this is not his first rodeo with her by his side.

Of course security came over right about then and people settled down a bit and the guy threatening to call the cops was escorted out.  Which you know left him thinking, "WHAT THE HELL? I didn't toss anything, I didn't do anything wrong!" If he had been a bigger hockey fan he would have known that the secondary fight always gets the bigger penalty. And the two drunks a few rows down and the jerk in front of us postured at each other a bit more through the game then the crowd swallowed up the guy from in front of us and his girlfriend and I would guess they left without a big fight in the parking lot.

But after it all happened I had to thank Brent for not being an asshole. Which he then corrected me and said he was an asshole, so I had to say, "yeah, but not that type of asshole." Because I have never seen him lose his cool like the guy in front of us (who apparently does it a lot since he and the girlfriend had a routine). I wouldn't deal well with him being that kind of asshole.

Because I am.

Or I can be.

Even before last night I was thinking about writing about temper. And then all of that happened and I thought, well, okay, it's time.

My dad had a very long fuse and a slow burn but once he got mad at you he was mad. There wasn't a lot of going back. If he got to the point that he didn't like you the odds of him changing his mind were slim. But it took a lot of effort from someone to get him there. He just didn't get mad easily. My mother on the other hand has a flash bang temper. If she gets mad it's quick and explosive and then over with. She is easier to tick off but doesn't stay that way. I used to always joke that I had the combination of them both, I was quick to anger and once I got there I stayed there.

Now you all know I've mellowed over the years and for the most part people don't see the temper like that. They might get a taste here and there that reminds them it's still simmering but for the most part I don't lose control. I've gotten much better at weighing out a situation and seeing where it will lead before jumping the gun. Take last night for instance.  The drunk guys were being douchebags by knowing that people wanted them to sit down so they could see and not doing it. Because drunks guys are often douchebags. The guy sitting in front of us responded to the douchebaggery by being a dick. Which isn't the right call. The right call would have been to get an usher to either tell them to sit or walk them out. But he didn't. Now these three guys would have yelled and sputtered and then either flamed out or been reprimanded by security and it would have been over if Self-important guy hadn't jumped in threatening to call the cops. What he did was took male posturing, excess testosterone flare up and tossed a gallon of gas on it. Which made it a bigger deal and caused it all to last longer.

So back to my temper. Watching the altercation as it unfolded I was thinking everyone just sit down. Stop being stupid and sit. When the guy inserted himself and started escalating? Well I might have then told him to hang up his phone and sit down. Which I thought was pretty good because I didn't shout at him repeatedly or use the more colorful words that came to mind. But my temper flared at that point and as Brent said, my face got that scrunched up thing going...

Because that temper is still there. And sometimes I'm surprised at what I react to. Like the guy last night. I knew if he hadn't inserted himself it would have been over quicker but he just escalated things that were already bad enough and that pissed me off. I wanted them all to sit down and shut up so I could finish the game (which was great, by the way) in peace. Which I did, because see, just like the dick in front of us and his girlfriend Brent and I have a routine as well from the many times over the years I've gotten that scrunched up face thing. Instead of holding my earrings so I can fight he puts a hand on my knee to snap me back to reality. It usually works. It's just a calm reminder that I don't have to take on the world like a raging bull I can just sit back and relax and let things take care of themselves.

I'm not saying it always works, sometimes he's not around, or I'm too pissed to calm down. But it does more often than it doesn't. And through the years I've mellowed enough that I don't tend to let everything piss me off the way it used to. I haven't reached the point my dad was, where it took a lot, but I'm not where my mom was where if it does reach the point I go from calm to fury in 3.6 seconds.

The thing is that because I've mellowed so much over the years and because most of the people in my life didn't know me before I got it under control my temper can come as a surprise. I warn people when they are about to cross the line. When they've pushed me as far as I'm going to go. And sometimes they think I'm kidding. The thing is, I'm not. I can be vicious. If we are having an argument and I say, "Okay, I'm done now" and want to go calm down you really need to let me. Because I know at that point I am holding on to my self control with the slimmest of threads and if you push me I'm going to get ugly. I rarely get physical but that doesn't mean I won't cut you up with what I say. And I also know if push came to shove out in the world I would still get physical with someone. It's been years since I hit someone but it doesn't mean I can't still feel my fists ball up when I get angry enough. It doesn't happen often but I'm not cocky enough to think I have it mastered either.

And that leads us to the end of this blog. I know I have a vicious temper. I know if I gave it free reign I would still be a bitch on wheels. I know if I let my face do that scrunched up thing all the time I would be just a nasty piece of work. I know all of these things so I choose to do things that keep that under control. To live a different life. Because being pissed off all the time is exhausting. And lonely. It comes back around to the blog I wrote a few weeks ago about choosing happiness. This is part of that choice. I'm not always sunshine and roses sometimes I'm thunderstorms and thorns but I've figured out I'd rather not be that way. Being angry at the world is a bummer, man.

So what about you? Where is your temper on the spectrum? And what are you doing to make sure you control your temper instead of it controlling you? My secrets? Chocolate, meditation and when all else fails an emergency hand to the knee.....

Politics and angry people

I wasn't going to blog about the tragedy in Tucson or at least not until we had more facts about the situation but then I was involved in three different conversations about it yesterday from three wildly different points of view so I sort of felt compelled to. And truthfully this will only be about that particular event as it relates to the point I want to make.

You know my politics I was registered Independent until someone decided to co-opt the name for a political party, now I am officially Unaffiliated. You also know from my Strengths blog that one of my top strengths is Empathy. Those two end up tying together and I didn't even realize it until yesterday when I really stopped to think about why and what I believe. And why I get so frustrated with people when I am talking to them about politics.

You know I have linked this article before about how it is not only not likely but virtually impossible for the two sides to see eye to eye on any issue. But it never stops me from trying to make a point. The crazy thing for me is that I can usually see where someone is coming from, I might not agree with them at all, but I can understand and grasp why they feel what they feel. And it frustrates the heck out of me that they cannot see the other side as well. This is where the empathy light came on for me yesterday. See the deal with Strengths (talking Strength Finders Strengths here specifically) is that they are just who you are. You operate from that base continually and could never explain how you do what you do and you (this is the key part here) don't understand how others cannot.

So here is where the Tucson issue comes in to play. On Saturday the story started unfolding while I was away from the house. I watched my Facebook feed start lighting up with the story. Pieces were trickling out of Arizona, lots of false information, lots of panic. And then the blame game started. This was obviously the fault of the Tea Party! This was obviously the fault of Obama and his government takeover of everything policies! This was obviously...what ever your particular political bent was that's where you went. And then the rebuttals started, it wasn't Palin's fault, those were surveyors marks not targets for goodness sake, and when she said reload she wasn't talking about a gun...and again when discussing Second Amendment remedies didn't mean people should shoot someone. It's the left and the lamestream media's fault for blowing this all out of proportion! It's the fault of Faux News and Glenn Beck and the like for stoking the fires of fear! The left always wants to blame the right! Did you see this video clip that was just as bad as the one the opposite side just showed? And on and on and on...

You know who was really responsible for all of this? It was Jared Loughner. He did it. He bought the gun, he bought the bullets, he went to a crowd of people and he opened fire. He killed people. He wounded many others. And I am perfectly comfortable calling him crazy, though there was an opinion piece released right away about how it's wrong to say he was crazy because we don't know that he is. Guess what? I do know, want to know how? He bought a gun, bought the bullets went in to a crowd of people and started shooting! That's how I know he was crazy. No, not all crazy people are violent, but all super violent people are crazy.

And now that we are a few days out from the shooting we are starting to see more of the blame game and the it's not my fault game starting. What I would rather see is some time for self reflection. And network reflection. And political reflection. Do I believe that Jared Loughner was some sort of killing machine designed by the Tea Party movement? No, I don't. But my opinion is that he was already unstable and latched on to the hate factor that is brewing in this country and took it to an extreme. I actually believe that it would not have mattered if it were Giffords or Jesse Kelly at that rally he would have gone and he would have started shooting. Obviously I have no way to prove this, but what I have read about him, he was anti-government. Not just anti-Democratic party.

So where do we go from here? How do we dial down the arguments and turn it back into a conversation? How do we stop with the derisive, divisive, defensive talk and start in on open dialog? Because you would have thought a Judge being killed, a child being gunned down and a member of Congress in critical condition would have been a big wake up call. You would have thought. But you would have been wrong. Instead it seemed like another opportunity to scream at each other about how horrible the other guy is. But we have to stop that. We really do.

One of the conversations yesterday was on a Facebook status for a friend who does not live in the United States. He is overseas and the people posting were all overseas. I read all of the comments with growing sadness and frustration. The picture we are painting to the world is that we are all crazy. We pack our guns, we pack our rhetoric. We scream at each other and we get nothing done. It's a cartoon. But sadly, it's not that far off. We need to stop identifying our differences and start looking for common ground. And we need to stop letting the fringe define us.

When Christopher was little he would throw temper fits and then he would whine when he didn't get his way. The same as any other child. The difference is he got over it pretty quickly. You know why? Because it didn't work. I would tell him, I cannot understand you when you whine at me. And then I would ignore him until he stopped. He would follow me around for a little bit and I would completely ignore him. No response. Not a negative one or a positive one, just nothing until he used a normal voice and would talk to me reasonably again. If this worked on a two year old don't you think we could get it to work on adults?

But here is the deal, we all have to do it. We have to stop posting video clips that make our side look good and their side look bad. We have to stop watching Glenn Beck and his chalk boards and puppet shows and fear mongering. We have to stop letting Keith Olbermann and the Daily Kos define the left. We have to let people know that the Tea Party is not just a group of nut jobs who like to dress up funny and carry misspelled signs but actually started as a group of citizens who were tired of seeing money go in to the system without any discernible benefit coming out and the bulk of the movement is still that group.

And those of you reading this right now who are looking for clips to show me how I am wrong, how the left is at fault or the right is to blame, or the Tea Party is evil or it's not the fault of the crazy man...stop it. I am not arguing with you. I am asking you to stop and think and help to redefine the discussion. Before you post that link to the video showing how horrible the opposing side is, stop and think. What good will this do? And then think again. If you know KNOW that the clips showing how awful your side is were edited and taken out of context then can you not see that this one probably was as well? If you see someone using language that is designed specifically to incite an emotional angry reaction (death panels instead of end of life counseling for instance) ask yourself why you use it? What good does it do? What is the point? Are you trying to have a discussion or start an argument? Stop voting based on sound bites. Stop allowing the anger to overtake the message. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it evil, it just makes it something you don't agree with.

And if you are in a discussion with someone whose views you disagree with and you are interrupted by someone who is spouting rhetoric and posting clips to incite a fight treat them like you would any child having a temper fit and ignore them. The grownups need to talk now. We need to figure this out. I might not agree with what you have to say but I need to hear it and try to understand it and you need to do the same. That is the only way true non-partisan co-operation works. And I believe that is the only way to help turn our country back around.

And if you are ever in a position like the Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, Keith Olbermanns of the world where you have a devoted fan base that listens to every word you say. Please please take the time to weigh those words before you say them. It's much easier to be clever and cutting than it is to be kind and considerate. It's much easier to pick a sound bite or two and make it a catch phrase than it is to actually research an issue and find out how to either agree or disagree rationally. Please remember that part of your fan base might just be on the more fanatical side. Is it your fault if a crazy person acts in a crazy manner? No it isn't. But wouldn't it be much better if you never even had to ask yourself that question?