Temper And Patience

When I was a little girl (and all the way until I was a young adult) I was known for my terrifying temper. It wasn't that I got angry all the time, but whenever I did, my closest friends wouldn't dare to come near me. One once told me that she's scared to talk to me when I'm mad. When I was 16, I took the courage to admit this flaw in an essay I wrote. My teacher - whom I would like to believe had a genuine concern for me - penned a comment at the end of it, encouraging me in my proposed efforts to rein the monster in. That was the point in my life I started consciously refraining from flying into a rage as much as I could.

I've never really asked my friends how I'd fared, but surely I'm no longer the "angry little girl" they used to know? And not an "angry little woman" now, I hope!

I am generally a very patient person. Or maybe I'm generally impatient. Or maybe it's just really difficult to generalize patience. Having, however, been more than a decade in the teaching profession, my patience has been conditioned to reach an almost inhuman level when I'm at work. Sure, the kids push my limits every time, but I've thus far done really well in stopping myself from scolding, insulting and ridiculing anyone. It's hard - I am stupidity-intolerant - but, losing it won't make the stupidity go away, I remind myself. Every time I kept off snapping, my patience ups another notch and stays there.

I'd really like to think that I am right now, with all these conscious efforts to be always calm and reasonable, a person that no one is scared of anymore. In reality though, that's not true. My temper, though most of the time successfully suppressed, is still as fiery as it always has been. So, with improved patience and control, I have not become less scary. I am just scary a lot less frequently.

That means, yea - if you really tick me off.....