1  You know what's funny about being pissed off?

2  Sometimes really good things happen to you, even though you don't notice.

3  For example, yesterday's DN was written during one of those moments when I had just had a remarkably lousy day. Nothing huge, but just stuff that happens to all of us. It was just one of those days that you want to smash a boulder through a brick wall.

4  I got home idiotically late the night before because of idiotic stuff I had to do, and the last thing I had wanted to do was to spend a coupla hours looking for DN pictures, or of even trying to put a sentence together in the DN when I was so mad.

5  I wrote yesterday's DN in that frame of mind.

6  Well now fast-forward to last night when I again sat down at the computer to hammer out another DN. It was a bit late but I was pretty well-rested. I  checked out yesterday's DN so there might be some continuity from which I could launch this piece you are reading this morning. I pulled up yesterday's DN and looked at it. I had actually forgotten what I had put in there.

7 The first thing I saw was a beautiful beach with my foot in front of it. For the record, many times when I'm somewhere I really like, I take a picture of my foot with the exotic place in the background.

8  But I digress.

9  Anyway, in the photo I saw a pretty nice hiking boot on my foot. I completely forgot that I bought that last summer! It was like finding new shoes!

10   I started counting blessings once again. I thought back to the previous night, and why I was pissed, which went clear into yesterday morning, when something got me even MORE pissed, so much so that I actually raised my voice to my ASB students. The new place was stunned!

11  Now on my anger scale, it was up there, but hollerin'-wise, it was mild, for me. But having nothing to compare it to, they thought I was like Cyclops in the Odyssey after Odysseus blinds him with a hot poker. It was Olympian rage.

12  Really, all I did was sort of ask, "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"  I was again sputtering mad and walked out on my class, which I do on occasion. Nothing super loud, no cuss words, sort of like me on a sedative.

13  You may recall last year my walking out on my goofy fresmen class, who thought I had jumped off the Theatre roof and killed myself because of their rudeness. I thought it was a scream; they cried and even wrote me an apology letter for trying to kill me.

14  So this was another situation like that. I WAS amazingly angry, more than at any point this year, but certainly not like some of my more heroic escapades of yore, when I was known to hurl power drills through walls, straight from center stage.

15  It wasn't until  after my first go-around with Camp Anytown that I decided never to go off like that ever again. People can change.

16  So my "tirades" are pretty ungangsta nowadays.   Now I  just remove myself from the area. Sometimes I leave a parting shot just to let people know they've pushed too far, but it isn't much.

17  Anyway, I did calm down and fix the situation with logic and calm, a pretty consistent trait nowadays, and apologized, and we worked to make things better.

18  Right after all the students left this morning, I looked into Cougar Hall, the cafeteria at the Chill on the Hill, and saw the figure of a man dressed in all black sillhouetted against the glare. He was sweeping the place. There was almost a ghostly feel to the entire thing.

19  Turns out it was this really nice custodian who had gotten prostate cancer a few months ago and has been through it all. He looked healthy and great, and I stopped and talked with him. 

20  HIs name is Sam.

21  We had a sort of running joke since I met him. Each time he would ask me, "How you doin'?" my reply would be, "Can't complain." Even if I COULD complain, I'd always tell Sam"Can't complain." I reasoned that if you always answer "How you doin'?" or "How're things?" with, "Can't complain" that people will figure you have your stuff totally together, even if you actually CAN complain.

22  I started doing that with everybody and it worked. Still does. So when I saw Sam all healthy again, and with his usual good attitude towards life, I asked him how he was.

23  "Can't complain," he answered.

24  We laughed. He had been through all the waiting rooms, blood tests, and surgeries, and more waiting, and all the rest, and has to go back. But he looked great, and told me he was just not going to let things at work tear into his health, that he was just happy to be healthy and alive.

25  I just stood there, still shaking from whatever had almost made me go over earlier in the day, and I smiled. Somehow, that all suddenly seemed so silly to me.

26  See, there was a reason Sam was there right at that moment. I believe that, I really do. Call it what you will. But I think there are reasons for a lot of things.

27  Later in the day, all my stuff started falling back into place, the way life does sometimes. I was all packed and ready to call it a day when this other gentleman knocked on my window. He is a teacher I met earlier this year, a Vietnam war vet, an older fellow who has been nervous because he is still a relatively new teacher worried for his job. His wife fell recently, ishattering her shoulder and sending her to the hospital.

28 He asked if he could talk with me, because we have days where we'd just do that, share stories, roll our eyes, and just chat away afternoons.

29  He was practically in tears. He had just found out that several teachers had been laid off for next year, and that he was one of them. I was stunned, because he always works early mornings and late afternoons, often going home with a fatted suitcase of work. A teacher with a heart.

30  He told me that it had just happened, that he had just found out he had been laid off for next year.

 

31  All he ever did was dream about becoming a tenured teacher. He started teaching a bit late in life and that was his one dream: to achieve tenure. Had he made it until March 15 without notification he would have been tenured.

32  Now he had to take his suitcase to his mini-van, and then go to the hospital to visit his wife and tell her he had been laid off. He shrugged, gave a wave of the hand, and disappeared out the door.

33  I thought of my anger last night, of my tirade this morning, and then of Sam, and then of this beautiful gentleman, and I sighed.

34  I relaxed. I thought of his life, and of his wife, and of Sam's family, and then of my own family and friends.

35  And whatever it was that had kept me so angry for two days.

36  I didn't really remember what it was just then. I was just happy to be alive.

37  Sometimes.