Once upon a time, I got mad. Really mad. It doesn’t happen often. In fact, that was probably the first time, and I was already well into adulthood. But the guy had painted me into his version of the nuthouse with his broad generalizations, and when I tried to explain where he’d gone wrong, he just painted with broader strokes and crowed at his own intellectual superiority.

Just recently I got mad for a second time, and for remarkably similar reasons. The three main differences were that this argument wasn’t about politics, this time I was far more mad, and that this time I called the guy an ass. I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone an ass before, and I hope never to feel compelled to repeat the performance.

I’m not very good at being mad at people. It takes a lot of energy, and it’s probably not worth the effort. Making things worse, I’ve been mad so rarely that I’m unpracticed at the emotion, so I found myself going over and over the experience, trying to figure out what had happened. But I can’t sustain that for long, either, so I think I’ve called it quits. There are far too many other things that need my mental and physical energy just now.