Anger management!

A couple of years ago I wrote this passage:

"If I were a blogger this would be today’s entry:

Today I nearly became a statistic. Yesterday I read an article on traffic safety in the local paper which stated that, since the beginning of the year, 29 pedestrians have been hit by cars in St-Laurent. I was almost number 30.

This morning as I walked to work along Rochon Street (chosen since it is far safer than my previous route along the “racetrack” known as Cote Vertu), I approached an intersection. I stepped off the curb but saw a car coming on my left which was going fast enough to make me believe he was going through the stop sign. Finally he stopped (presumably because he saw me) and just as I got in front of him, he stepped on the gas. I had to jump backwards to avoid being hit. I yelled “HEY!” And then I went to the side of the car and yelled in a voice that I didn’t know I had “WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!!!!” It was so loud that a woman on the sidewalk part way down the street turned in alarm. The driver just looked blankly at me and then drove off.

What scared me more than nearly being knocked down by this car was finding out that I could be capable of such intense rage. Mind you, I did not swear (as I did in another incident) and I did not punch the car (yes, another incident) and I did not try to give him the finger because, being uncoordinated, the last time I did that it was my thumb that I raised and that really gives a totally different message …

Anyway, later today I was perusing some magazines in the pharmacy and saw one called something like “Body and Soul”. The cover had titles of articles like “Getting in touch with your intuition”, “How to have beautiful skin”, and “Tools to transform your anger”. Ahh I thought. This is what I need. I flipped open the magazine to the table of contents and scanned the titles. Hmm, no “Tools to transform your anger”. I flipped through the pages … nope. I went back to the table of contents and now I noticed in small print at the bottom of the adjacent page a list of page numbers and article titles. OK, page 86! I went to page 86 – it was the last page of an article on “How to have happy feet”. I went back to the listing thinking I had misread the page number. No, it was 86. I went back to page 86 thinking I had misread that page number. No it was the happy feet page! Meanwhile all sorts of *&^%! mail-in cards started sliding out of that ^*&@# magazine onto the floor! I slammed the magazine shut, threw it back on the rack and huffed out of the store.

Maybe this was a test. I think I failed …”