The other night I was relaxing before bed, reading my book. Mike came in with his Discover magazine and I knew that "quiet time" was over. My boyfriend has a tendency to misread situations that require quiet, so I put my bookmark in place and started a conversation.
I informed him that I was still annoyed about the lady at the pizza place calling me old, as well as the manager at Cheesecake Factory being so rude. I continued on saying that I was planning on writing a letter to the big-wigs at Cheesecake Factory Corp, to let them know that their hiring staff in St. Louis, MO is doing a very poor and unorganized job. I had already told my mother all this earlier in the day. She told me I was wasting energy on things I couldn't do anything about and that I had other things to do. "Really?" I asked? "Like what? Study for my pizza test?"
Anyway, as I continued to drone on and on about how I SHOULD have handled these situations, Mike said, "You are an angry brooder!" I started laughing and informed him that this is something he should know about me by now. "I'm serious!" he says, and pulls out the Discover magazine. Of all the things I could have been talking about, I focused in on the article he had been reading. And so my science lesson began.
I am going to spare you the specific details, but I did find this interesting. Apparently, there are two ways that people handle anger. You either have an increased sense of memory regarding the issue you are incensed about and continue to ruminate about it, or you lash out immediately. I am pretty sure that I do both, but the article did not address that category. (I guess they are not sure how to study people like me.) Regardless, I was able to show my multi-talented gift this morning.
Over the past three days an unknown number has been calling me literally every 15 to 30 minutes. I do not answer the phone when I do not know the number, and believe that if the call is important, the caller will leave a message. After three days of these phone calls and no messages, I finally called the number back. A lady answered by saying, "Hello?" I explained that someone had been calling me incessantly from that number and I would like to know what was going on. She launched into a sales call, stating that I had signed up for a government grant (I have no recollection of this) and how she could help me get money for free! (Yeah, right.) I told her I was not in the least interested in her proposal and to please stop calling me. After I hung up, I started thinking about all the things I should have said to her. And so....I called her back.
When she answered, I asked her what her name was and why she continued to call every 15 minutes and never left a voice message. She launched into her grant proposal script again. I asked her to please stop talking about that and reminded her that I already told her I was not interested. I explained that calling people over and over again was annoying and asked to speak to her manager. She offered the phone number of her manager (where is this lady??) which I ignored and asked her again to take me off her calling list. We then hung up and for some reason, I felt much better about the situation.
I'm not sure where this leaves me in the short fuser/angry brooder category, but I have to say, I was very happy once I got off the phone. Maybe I am just a confrontationalist.
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