On petty anger.

I'm having a hard time not being furious right now.

See, on my street, when the snows come, there's a particularly obnoxious practice of people putting shit out along the street to reserve their parking spots. The system is entirely baseless - these spaces are owned by the city of Philadelphia, and there's absolutely no reason to respect this behavior. But for better or for worse, it's done anyway.

Across the street from my house, a pair of pink lawn chairs mark a perfectly good spot. One that, judging from tire tracks in the snow, has not been used in two days.

Someone is reserving a spot for a car that hasn't been there in forty-eight hours. Let that sink in for a second. Someone has laid claim to something that isn't theirs and isn't using it at all.

It's stupid, right? It's such a small, petty thing that in my head, I know, I know it's absolutely nothing to get worked up over. It's not worth the time and energy to find this person and beat them mercilessly with their own lawn chairs. It's not worth the heartspace to hate them with the intensity of an excretory outburst the morning after you've eaten two dozen hot wings.

But I feel it. It's in my head now, popping up every third or fourth thought like a bass drum thump. I can't help envisioning what kind of self-centered, over-entitled cunt would do something so thoughtless. What kind of empty, fuckless life this person must lead to need to grasp at something so obnoxious to feel some modicum of control. What their face would look like as I rang their doorbell and shat on their doorstep.

I want to lash out. I want to teach them a lesson. I want to rub it into their face just how much of a fucking cock they're being.

And I wish I could end this post with something inspirational, like "But I rise above, take the high road, and let it go." But that wouldn't be honest of me. Truth is, I want to find this person and smash their face into a brick wall.

That's the punchline, folks. I don't care how enlightened, easygoing, or good a person you think you are. The fact is, everyone has shitty thoughts. Everyone gets pissed off at really small, stupid shit. And sometimes, it's all we can do to keep ourselves from doing something illegal in response to it.