11/27/02: Your Ten Defining Moments

[juju]

I have another one that seems kind of silly, but my wife says is really good.

When I was in junior high, I used to walk about 2 miles to school every day. It was a long walk, but I enjoyed it because it gave me some alone time, some time to think.

One day while I was walking home from school, I was pissed. Really, really full of Rage. I don't even remember what the hell I was so angry about, hell it was probably something really insignificant. But it seemed pretty world-shaking at the time.

I took my backback and slammed it against a tree as hard as I could, yelling as loud as I could. Just as an expression of my anger.

I felt a little better after that.

When I got home, I opened up my backpack and saw that I had crushed my calculator. I had totally cracked the hell out of it. Well, I felt pretty stupid. I felt really stupid. I mean, well it is just a stupid little calculator, but I really liked that calculator. It was a Solar calculator. It had no batteries. It stole its energy from the very light itself. Man, let me tell you, back in the 80's, that was some cool shit.

It wasn't really very earth-shattering, because it was just a cheap little item. But it made me feel so stupid. I was like, "Look what I have done. Why did I do that? Was the few moments of relief worth the damage I caused?" That consequence, though small, taught me that flying into fits of rage causes you to break things that you like, and only makes you regret it afterwards.

I've never really been a very violent person. I haven't been in a fight since the 3rd grade; heck I can usually talk my way out of a predicament. It probably helped a lot more that I've never seen my father or brother get in a fight in their entire life. But for some reason I kept that calculator. I don't even know why, it didn't work anymore. I just threw it in a basket of junk. Every time I looked in that basket, though, I saw the cracks in it, and was reminded of the consequences of what I had done.