Take My Index Finger

“You guys argue all the time.”  That’s what my older one says.  She’s right.  And you try.  No one wants to argue.  Even if you can work with it, it’s a sorry thing to subject others to.  But as I’ve learned Nikolay Chernyshevski once asked: “What Is to Be Done?”  When someone insists that “2+ 2 is 5!” what can you do?  Sometimes one says: “Yes, dear.”  Sometimes one says: “That’s absurd. I don’t agree.”  You can be thoughtful and patient without a hint of being snarky and say, “Let me make sure I heard what you have to say on the matter, you want me to understand that 2 + 2 is 5, is that correct?”  Usually, I make my point, for dignity’s sake that 2 + 2 is, in fact, 7 and try to move on. 

I don’t usually use the car.  I thought to use one today.  I was meeting a young applicant to my alma mater at the nearby Starbucks this morning.  It’s a mile away and its cold.  So, should I take the car and drop her off, as she needs to go somewhere else in the neighborhood, or should she drop me off?  If the prior, it is assumed that I’ll go to meet her, when she’s ready.  If the later, it is assumed that I’ll get home by myself. 

“Drop me off then.  The walk will do me good.”  Someone calls.  I take the call.  Suddenly it’s an even-toned conversation.  “Well you see, 2 + 2 is 4.”  “Yes, indeed.  I’ve long suspected that 4 - 2 is 2, as well.”  “Totally.  We’ll talk more about this one Wednesday.”  Talking to someone I’m only remotely invested in emotionally it all proceeds so rationally. 

We approach the exit and my wife makes to turn right.  I’m not going right.  I’m going left.  We just discussed that.  Without interrupting the perfectly normal conversation I’m in the middle off I take my index finger and jab it in the air in a leftward direction, once and then twice.  It wasn’t polite.  I could have dropped the phone and, “Darling, left please.”  But as it is I may as well have poked my finger in her ribs.  Whatever mood of tolerance there was is gone.  I’d meant to stay cool.  I’d meant to be patient.  But in the moment, the anger rose and burst before I could do anything about it, much the way Swami Vivekananda suggested back in the 1890’s.   What is to be done?  More work I suppose mastering the inner flatulents of anger and the rudiments of addition and subtraction.

Monday, 01/22/18