Anger management

I'm continually amazed at how angry a lot of people are. I had an incident of Road Rage today that reminded me of when I was in a parking garage in downtown Dallas a couple of months ago. Incidentally, I talked with the security guard there that used to work at my building way up in Richardson (outside of the loop).

Anyway, the nice security guard told me that I was in the wrong spot and I needed to go out of the parking garage and drive to the other side of the building. But I had to stop at the exit gate and hand the attendant my ticket.

Except there wasn't an attendant. I waited for a minute or two until one car was queued up behind me.

Still no attendant. Then another lady in a white van pulled up behind that car.

That's when it got ugly. She had not waited for more than 30 seconds before honking her horn and screaming at my old security guard, "what the hell are you standing there for? I know you can open that damn gate!"

The attendant finally got back and was totally distraught. The poor little old lady had to go get some change from the safe and no one could relieve her. She proceeded to get cursed out by the lady in the white van about how she was terribly inconvenienced, blah, blah, blah.

I tried to tell the attendant lady not to worry about it but she was already shaken. Why did the yelly lady have to be hating? Was she having a bad day and taking it out on the nice little old parking lady? This is not a life or death scenario and the yelly lady had to wait maybe an extra minute. Did it really matter that much? We don't just have Road Rage, we now have Parking Rage as well.

I guess I realized how important it is to get outside of yourself and always consider your neighbor's POV. And I know that anger can be useful at times, but I think no one would question that this kind of rage just ends up ultimately destroying ourselves more than anyone else.