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The other day I happened across an afternoon television talk show, and learned that America is such an angry but innovative country that we have developed new and improved forms of rage.
Road Rage, of course, is a familiar topic by now, and I have felt its stirrings even in Salida. While I was driving on some errands the other day, a friend's truck approached from down the quiet street. We stopped mid-street to converse, and a minute or two later, some jerk pulled up behind me, then honked. It looked like an out-of-town car, since it had been washed sometime in this millennium and its windshield had no cracks, but with these new license plates, you can't be sure of such things any more.
My friend nodded toward his gun rack, whence reposed a vicious-looking four-foot crowbar, and I glanced yearningly at a short-handled four-pound hammer on my passenger seat. But we kept our tempers in check, and did not get out to perform educational surgery on that horn-happy dimwit who should have known that if he was in a hurry, he shouldn't have been in Salida.
So it is possible to avoid succumbing to the temptations of Road Rage, but I don't know about the other rages they were talking about on that TV show, like Shopping Rage (directed toward those who wheel a heaping cart into the 10-items-or-less express lane), Sports-Parent Rage (directed toward anyone who might impair a brat's career) and Air Rage (directed toward people who lie to you about why you're still on the ground two hours after they locked you in).
Since it is fashionable to blame every social problem on
drugs, and we are hearing about more rage, I checked the
Statistical Abstract of the United States. Caffeine can
make people edgy -- coffee jitters
-- and even rural
truck stops sell espresso these days, not to mention all
those urban Starbucks.
But in 1985, the average American drank 27.4 gallons of coffee, and that had dropped to 23.5 gallons in 1997. Tea carries a fair amount of caffeine, and drinking increased slightly, from 7.1 gallons to 7.4. But the trend is downhill after a 1995 peak at 8.0 gallons.
Since caffeine ingestion has declined, despite the
increase in rage, another common drug might be a factor.
It used to be common to urge someone to light a
cigarette to calm your nerves,
and if people are
smoking less these days, might they be more rage-prone?
Alas, in these enlightened times, it is impossible to argue that the substance burned in many Native American peace pipes could have any redeeming social value.
I was going to try, though, because I recalled something in Clarence Darrow's autobiography about how much easier it was to settle cases, or labor disputes, if the famous lawyer put all the parties in a room where they had to borrow smokes from each other, etc.
But I couldn't find the book, which sent me into a short fit of Reference Rage, a common malady among writers I know. The resources of the Internet just make it worse, since it's impossible to contrive a coherent Boolean search string when you're seething.
This may be related to another my afflictions, Windows
Rage. It usually occurs when the Blue Screen of Death
appears, and if you hear me shouting What is this crap
about an 'Illegal Operation'? Who elected you to make
laws?
-- then I've suffered another attack.
Regular readers know that I also suffer from
Telepredator Rage,
and it's frustrating because the
rage-producers are not within reach, and so you can't rip
their lungs out.
Not all my rages are high-tech. Most annoying lately is Shoelace Rage -- if a country can make green ketchup, then it should be able to make shoelaces that stay tied, rather than come loose and trip you. This is the opposite of Extension Cord Rage, which results from the impossibility of untangling a 50-foot extension cord in less than 15 minutes, and more like an hour if it's 20 below and you're trying to reach your car with a battery charger.
Couldn't the shoelace people ask the extension-cord people about how to make products that will stay tied up, and the extension-cord people could learn from the shoelace people how to make cords that untie themselves, no matter how you try to knot them up?
And perhaps most annoying is that none of these rages ever gets taken seriously: no scholarly studies, no lengthy magazine articles, no televised discussions. It should make me angry, but I've already got more rage than I need, and it seems to get worse every day.
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