y dad was an only child with older parents, and I think that might have caused his anger issues. Limited social interactions, you know?

So, to me, my dad was a gruff Navy captain. We got along well enough – we both loved trains. But no, you didn’t want to get him angry. He’d go volcanic. So that’s my excuse (which really isn’t an excuse) – learned behavior.

My anger has cost me three jobs in the past. Someone in authority would order up a big plate of stupid. We’d argue. I’d lose my temper. And there’s the door.

As I got older I learned to hold back – my final two jobs were brilliant. Retired from the last respected, with a huge party and all that. And my hobby is model train operations, specifically dispatching them. On slower railroads, it’s like watching grass grow. But two of them, the Leigh, Monongahela & Ohio, and the WAZU, both those railroads are high-speed dense-traffic lines. It’s like air traffic control. Worst thing is the radios – there is only so much bandwidth and a dozen trains are looking for orders. But I’ve always handled it. That is, until recently.

I don’t want to he-said/she-said this. What happened, happened. But someone was clearly violating the owner’s rules of radio. It got in my way. It pissed me off. I held my tongue and worked around it. But after we finished, we held a debrief. Again, the other party talked over everyone. One of the crew simply got up and left, furious about it. I felt my own anger rising. When it was my turn to speak, I indicated the person who’d violated house radio rules. At that, he talked over me. I told him I had the floor. He didn’t pause, but continued to talk over me.

I felt my dad behind me. Strike him down! Give way to your emotions. I’d like to say that I resisted, that I handled things with a cutting comment, a withering glance. But no. I released the dogs. Pitching my voice into the command tone and timbre I’d learned from my old man, I yelled “SHUT UPPPPP!”.

As Douglas Coupland coined it:

Emotional Ketchup Burst – The delayed outpouring of emotion after prolonged internal suppression—suddenly and all at once.

I’m sure that was a side of me few in the room had ever seen. Stunned silence. The debrief finally got started – hesitantly – again. I was pretty churned at that point. I knew, flat out, that my friendship with that person was over. Didn’t care – I’d been wanting it over for months now. But still, I just stood up, quietly thanked the host and left.

No real fallout from this. Two of the people there stopped by later to check in on me, and quietly siding with me. The host called me that night and we talked about it. He agreed with my take on it. It’s the topic at the club. I don’t know if I have a new nickname. I’ll accept it if I do.

But it’s interesting, walking through the botanical gardens today and thinking about it. Culturally, people expect you to maintain composure, to not let go, to be stoic. I’m a member of a Zen group, and I’m sure there aren’t any koans about losing your shit.

But it’s funny. Yes, we view angry outbursts as something you do not do, but every movie focuses on Popeye-level violence with the hero beating his opponents bloody, sometimes to death. So that’s okay? Heroes in those movies are roaring and bellowing all through them. William Wallace screams “FREEEEEDOM!” and not, in an inside voice, “Hey, freedom. Pass it on, okay?” Even the Japanese with their stone-wall faces and silence, they scream like schoolgirls in samurai movies (in fact, in movies and anime, they usually overact their emotions, chewing the scenery and emoting in high voices).

So, like, which is it? Everything in media proposes riding your high emotions like Slim Pickens did the bomb. But lose your temper with a stonewalling councilman and security will turf you to the street.

Perhaps we are all repressed, all boiling at life’s frustrations. And media allows us to vicariously rage and scream and throw Persian ambassadors down a well shaft. Maybe that’s what media is about – social venting.

Should I have just written an angry blog about it? Shot a loud YouTube video?

I think my dad was right on this one. At the end of the day, I think everyone is better off.

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