Anger: It's all upside.

Yesterday I made a trip to what passes for our local auto parts and repair emporium to enquire as to whether some parts we had ordered recently had "made the scene" so to speak. When I strode up to the counter (that's right, strode), I was pleased to see only one other customer in front of me and two people situated behind the counter, strumming the keys on their computer terminals. Not wanting to assume my own importance, I took a position just askance of the fellow already being helped, in order to give the unoccupied customer service representative the chance to wave me in when he was ready. After oh, several minutes of standing there waiting for my turn to be served, the fellow looked up from his screen with an irritated glare and said: "Whatcha lookin' for?" Hmmm. Well. I adjusted my monocle, gave a quick flick of the brim of my top hat, hooked my thumbs in the sides of my waistcoat, cleared my throat and said: "A little bit of fucking friendly customer service my good fellow, but it looks like I'm shit out of luck here, you ignorant turd!" Then out loud and back in reality, I muttered something to the effect of "I am just here to check on the parts I came here to check on yesterday that you told me might be in today" or some other rambling, inane response. After exchanging the least possible amount of words with the twit necessary to extract my required information, I turned and left, gritting my teeth all the way out the door. I spent the rest of the day with a serious case of l'esprit d'escalier.

Now that I have had time to think some more about this silly little incident, the thing that keeps popping up to me is my own anger about the whole thing. Really, does it make sense for me to get homicidally angry over some guy's offensive service mannerisms? And could I be part of the problem? Thanks, I didn't think it was me. As usual all this thinking got me to well, thinking about anger in general and its place in our society. I did a little bit of studying on emotions in a Psyc course and I learned some interesting facts about anger in our culture. It will come as no surprise to most people that studies done on the subject have shown that North American men and women express their emotions in several different ways, often depending on the situation and their perceived roles. Generally, North American women are more emotionally expressive, both verbally and nonverbally. On average, North American women smile more than men, tend to touch others more, and use more expressive facial expressions and body language. It has been shown that women discuss their feelings and emotions more easily than men and are more willing to acknowledge that they are vulnerable at times. In essence, women do the vast majority of the emotional heavy lifting in North America, and men are generally expected to mask or conceal their feelings. In fact, studies have shown that men in North America only express one emotion more freely than women. One! Weird.

Now what could this one emotion be that is so awesomely powerful it is the only one men require to survive and exist on this crazy planet of ours? Why, it's anger, of course! Those of you in the room who had your hands up excitedly, ready to tell us all about the power of love, don't look so dejected! Anger is an exciting, dynamic emotion, with endless subtleties and varieties of expression. It's not a loss for us, it's a gain. Most men know that it was (probably) God who once said: "If I start out liking you, I might be disappointed, but if I start out hating you, there's nowhere to go but up!" Men have always instinctively known this to be true and are thus much better prepared to face the world's troubles (and dickheads) than women with all of their "different emotions" (confusing!), "expressive feelings" (tiring!), and "getting along" (boring!).

Studies have shown that men in other parts of the world are much more expressive with the other, shall we say, more "delicate" emotions than are North American men. These other parts of the world include France, Italy, The Middle East, and Spain. Is it any coincidence that these areas currently lead the world in random explosions at this time? See what unfocussed emotional expression gets you? In other areas of the world, including Germany, England, and Switzerland, the men may in fact even more freely express their sadness than the women (la-ame!). Wait, I thought Switzerland was "neutral." These same studies have shown that Asian men and women control their emotional expression equally, which is understandable because I would think Hari-Kari would take one steady frickin' hand. The emotional tally appears to be: World: quite a few emotions, Asia: no (discernible) emotions, North American Women: every freakin' emotion (fortunately for Dr. Phil) and finally, North American Men: one very special emotion.

What all this study reading and theorizing and making up of information has left me with, besides a warm and fuzzy feeling, is a sort of detente with my concern about my anger issues. I am not surprised that I was right to go to anger first all these years, why it is in my very nature! In fact I am so confident in my approach now, I may even try out some of the other emotions for fun some time and maybe put on my wife's clothes and carry around her little handbag telling everything that moves and has fur "I love you!" Christ! Not likely. I was also glad to see that, as usual, us men here in the New World are leading the way for our peers and that we have found the path to enlightenment: sweet, irrational, fearsome anger. If the Dalai Lama is on the ball, he should really consider "losing it" one of these days. He won't regret it.