Really,
I am not a vengeful person. I have
always figured it is not worth the effort to sit around planning ways to get
back at people for the slights they have inflicted. This is not due to the fact that I am so
saintly, but rather to the fact that I am a guilt magnet. I’d feel guilty if anything I did hurt
somebody - even if they kind of deserved it.
Heck, I’m sure I’d never even be able to serve on a jury, because I’d
feel so bad if we went and condemned that nice serial ax murderer to life in
prison - after all everybody makes
mistakes. So I believe it is better in
the long run to just let Karma and the Good Lord sort it all out.
But
there is one kind of situation that will send me into great thoughts of
magnificent and complex schemes for sweet revenge. That makes me reconsider my opposition to the
death penalty. That makes me wistful for
the good old days of lynch mobs and vigilante justice. That awakens the dormant savage that lurks
somewhere deep in the recesses of my domesticated psyche. And what in the world could invoke such deep
and violent a reaction from one who would normally avoid conflict at all costs? It is one of the most evil and unredeemable
of all slime that crawls on this earth.
One of the foulest curses to plague this planet. Truly evil incarnate......
Telephone pranksters or perverts.
I’m sure this, or something similar, has
happened to you. It is the middle of the
night. You’ve just gotten the baby back
to bed after a two hour struggle, you are dozing off, when the phone rings.
Heart racing, temples pounding, the hair on your neck sticking straight out in
feeble reminiscence of its ancient fight or flight response you leap from your
bed and snatch the phone from its cradle.
Frantic, you immediately take a head count, thinking, “Somebody’s been
in an accident!” or “His dad had a heart attack!” and instead it turns out to
be some nasty little demon who wants to know if your Prince Albert can is
running, or to tell you your refrigerator is suffocating. Or worse, wants to know what you are wearing
or to tell you how sexy you sound when you are threatening vital parts of his
anatomy like that. I don’t know about you, but even after impressing the caller
with the colorful range and depth of my vocabulary, slamming down the receiver
and pulling the phone out of the wall, I find it difficult to get back to
sleep. Especially since the baby is
usually awake again. As I sit rocking in the darkness, lulling my little one
back to sleep with the rhythmic grinding of my teeth, I make exquisitely
intricate plans for tracking down and torturing these deviants. No simple
‘getting even’ for me. I prefer the
maniacal joy of plotting the ultimate revenge.
Playing out different scenarios in careful detail, I outline in my mind
exactly how to drive them to the very brink of insanity. And, as they writhe in the perfection of my
vengeance begging me to turn them in so they can face the consequences of their
actions, I feel vilified. But this is
where my fantasies start to break down. I try to visualize how rewarding that
moment of denouement will be. Attempting
to get a sense of how triumphant I will feel, I rewind the highlights of my
plan in my head as I slip into the nursery to place the baby in his crib. In a last ditch effort to seem the winner, I
stride pridefully back to my own bed.
Snuggling under the covers it occurs to me that during all of this my
would-be tormentors are doing one of two things. They are already peacefully sleeping -
blissfully unaware that their little prank had any effect other than a good
laugh for them, or they are still making their faceless calls and screaming
with hilarity at the reactions they are getting. Either way, all of my bile and anger are
affecting no one but me. Who’s getting
the last laugh after all? After a bit
I’m finally able to doze off, and dream peacefully, (as significant other has
been doing through all of this) the incident all but forgotten. Well, at least until the next day. But by the end of the week I will hardly
think about it anymore. Probably.
Okay,
so next time I'm gonna wake up sleeping beauty here and let it affect HIM.
Comments
Post a Comment