TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 49

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 4, 2000006


Dear Crowd and one at a time,

	I woke up late this morning.  I was 
aghast at the clock.  I'm used to getting up 
fairly early to get the day working.  But today 
is Shabbos, so I didn't set an alarm.  And me and 
my cowlick didn't get up until 9:45.  It makes me 
dizzy.


 
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Good and Mad

	I must have been awfully mad, because I 
stormed out of the apartment in Hyattsville, 
stomped down the stairs and went to the car.  I 
pulled myself into the front seat and folded my 
arms tightly.  I don't think I was crying, just 
very angry.  I was wearing Mary Jane shoes, the 
one strap across the top of the foot black scoop 
neck variety.  They were rugged shoes.  I 
couldn't contain my fury and I kicked my right 
foot against the part of the dashboard opposite 
me.  As I watched my shoe smack the dashboard 
clock, the glass over the clock's face cracked. 
This brought an immediate end to my rage and it 
was replaced by fear and trepidation.  What had I 
done now?  I'd actually broken something.  Anger 
had its dangers when you acted it out.  The 
lesson was not lost on me.  I had to find less 
destructive ways of expressing it.

	From then on, I was a careful tantrummer. 
I checked the area twice for breakables before I 
threw myself down and kicked and screamed.  I 
also checked for dirt; musn't get dirty.  And I 
checked for any items that might get in my way 
and hurt me.  So the area had to be searched.  To 
this day, I am cautious with my anger.  Towards 
the end of the marriage with David (AKA 
villainman, or verman) I was frequently overcome 
by frustration and rage.  So I threw things at 
him.  But never anything breakable, and never 
anything that could damage him.  I'd throw a box 
of kleenex, and a set of light weight headphones. 
I threw clothing, never a pillow (that would have 
been silly, and you must avoid looking silly when 
you're angry enough to throw things).   Once, 
when I was good and furious, I picked up a broken 
radio, completely non-functioning, found a safe 
place on the floor to hurl it, and hurled.  The 
release was a blessing and my temper returned to 
normal.

	It takes a lot to make me mad.  Usually, 
I express my displeasure the moment it occurs to 
me, and I air out differences in the same way. 
That prevents the sort of built up anger that 
leads to screaming and throwing things.  Since 
villainman left, my anger has subsided.  I am 
keenly aware that I'm not walking around with an 
explosion contained just inside my skin anymore. 
Oh yes, I expressed my displeasure to villainman 
as it came up, but he didn't hear me.  He'd often 
fall asleep in the middle of the discussion, so 
the anger built up.  It led me to hit myself over 
the head with a flashlight, or bang my head 
against the wall.  I don't need to do that 
anymore.  I haven't slammed my foot against a 
clock since I was three.  That one time did it 
for me.

 
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Graphology Passes a Test

	At one of the FASEB (Federated American 
Societies for Experimental Biology) conventions, 
I met a Ph.D. linguist who earned his living 
concocting advertising, knowing his words and 
what all the phonemes meant.  He'd done his 
doctoral thesis boiling down all the words in the 
English language into, "up", "down", "in", and 
"out"  -- a pretty hefty task, not one for the 
faint of heart.  This was only for the lingual 
Summo cum laude wrestler.  We flirted over words 
and word derivations, double and triple meanings 
and the crispness or flaccidity of definitions. 
We had a fine time.

	His name was Judge, an odd name, 
especially for a linguist.  Judge Schoenfeld. 
There we were, stuck in Atlantic City with 
seventeen thousand scientists and how many 
thousands of exhibitors, unleashed only when the 
booths closed and the symposia were over.  On one 
evening, Judge wound up with our LABINDUSTRIES, 
inc. party for dinner.  Dinner in Atlantic City 
was abysmal.  The restaurateurs knew that 
conventioneers were a captive audience, tethered 
to our hotels, from out of town and ignorant of 
where to go.  If it weren't within walking 
distance, then it was going to be big money for a 
cab.  And if you took a taxi, you had to know 
where you were going.  You couldn't get in a taxi 
and instruct the driver to take you to a good 
restaurant.  The restaurants on the boardwalk, 
within the hotels and within walking distance of 
the convention center were routinely awful, and 
damned expensive, too.

	After a few disappointing days in 
Atlantic City, someone was bound to let you in on 
the secret of Zaberer's.  Zaberer's was a huge 
expanse of room after room of restaurant.  Just 
for the experience, it was worth the price. 
Every room was decorated in a different style, 
and each was a lesson in bad taste.  One room 
would have grapes hanging from the walls and 
ceiling, and naked statuary draped in marble 
cloth, accentuated by well placed fig leaves, and 
another room would be a fifties paradise of juke 
boxes, bobby soxers, hit records and giant 
toasters with posters of happy 1950s families all 
white and crew cutted with the women in poodle 
skirts.  Another room would be decorated like the 
red velvet interior of a bordello, with flocked 
wall paper and baroque mirrors.  Our party of 
twelve was seated in the grapes and statuary 
room.  I sat next to Judge, and the rest of the 
revellers faded into the background.  We got into 
a discussion about handwriting analysis.  Judge 
was misinformed and thought graphology was on a 
par with astrology and tarot cards.  I endeavored 
to educate him to the contrary.

	While we talked, the waiters brought 
gifts from Mr. Zaberer.  "Mr. Zaberer would like 
you to have this baked potato, compliments of the 
house."  The potato was the size of a regulation 
foot ball.  You could try to see over it to your 
fellow diners, or you could stop laughing and 
attempt to eat it.  "Mr. Zaberer would like you 
to enjoy this oysters Rockefeller."
"Mr. Zaberer would really like it if you were to 
dive into this thicket of fried artichoke 
hearts." This was before ordering the meal.

	Between Judge and me, the discussion of 
handwriting analysis had reached a show down.  I 
offered to take a look at his handwriting, for 
free, and tell him three things about him that 
were specific and would never be known by anyone 
but himself.  We got a waiter to bring us a piece 
of unlined eight and a half by eleven.  Judge 
chose his favourite pen.  It was all in good fun, 
really, even though I did have something to 
prove.  It's just that I knew graphology to be 
based in solid logic and statistics, a useful 
means of character portraiture.  Judge hadn't a 
clue.

	But when I took a look at his writing, I 
could tell that something was amiss.  There were 
all sorts of signs of recent catastrophe, and 
protective marks of a man trying to keep up 
appearances.  I fumbled for the right thing to 
do.  But in the end, I chose honesty.

	"Something has happened recently that has 
shocked you, changed you, hurt you.  I don't know 
how recently, but it looks fresh.  You are 
pretending that everything is normal, but it 
isn't.  You're in a lot of pain."

	He dropped his fork and his mouth hung 
open.  He looked around him at the other diners 
and asked me if we could step outside for a 
moment.  I followed him into an outdoors sitting 
area, a quiet retreat from the clamour of 
Zaberer's.  He told me that two weeks before, his 
brother, who had always been mentally unstable, 
had come home from the hospital facility and in 
the middle of the night had murdered both their 
parents.

	I had not expected to be so dramatically 
correct.  And Judge now believed in graphology. 
I was shocked at his misery, and taken out of 
myself over his story.  I apologized a dozen 
times for being so abrupt and blunt.  But he 
waved away my remorse.

	"How could you see that in my writing?" he asked.

	And I asked myself, "How could I see that in his writing?"


 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net