Wot I'll Fight To The Death For

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It's true that I am is the only-est One who can grok it, because everyone else has to interpret my behavior as if they were doing what they "think" I am is doing, but for their own reasons. I've been in a rage for the last couple of days about how I'm getting innocently screwed by the county water people. No, it's not personal, just a bookkeeping error of $15, but if it's left uncorrected it invokes the old joke about "a billion here, and a billion there soon builds up to be a chunk of real money.

This incident set off my deepest fears, and what I'll fight to the death over. Now, this is really an admittance that I've wasted my life and don't have a good sense of humor. What I was/am totally incensed about would be so petty to the average person, "I can't get no respect!"

True, the overcharge is only $15 more than I usually pay. It might not show up for another six months. Why am I fighting city hall over such trivial amounts of money. Candidly, it's about principle. The only principle/s I have. Without it I'm a worm rather than a homo sapiens.

Last night after I had gone to bed and lay there not sleeping because I'm so deeply angry I finally figured out a sane way to go about resolving this issue. I needed a printout of my payment schedule in order to show that I have a legitimate complaint. It's probably a sure thing I can make sense even to the people who just shined me on as if I don't matter.

I still couldn't go to sleep because I was wound so tight, so I took another pill and it worked. This morning I casually went out for breakfast and sat with my brother and an old high school friend. My brother left for work, and my friend and I sat for another hour as he explained to me how thrilled he was with the books he has been reading lately.

Then, I was very pleased with myself for letting him talk uninterrupted until he left, and then I drove the short distance down to the Public Works office, calmly and purposefully walked in the door. I had to wait until the clerk finished with the customer in front of me, then I asked the same woman who dissed me last Friday if she would print me out a copy of the last twelve months of my payments that are drafted on my checking account.

She knew who I was from our former encounter, but she was very professional and printed me out what I'd requested with only a minimal delay, and I walked out. This may read as a very mundane event, and it was because I made it happen that way by controlling my temper.

I didn't look at the printout but briefly on my way home. After I got home I still didn't look at it much. Just enough to see that my assessment of the situation from last Friday was correct, and so to give myself some time to calm down even more I decided to take a ride in order to change the scenery in which I exhibited my extreme angst.

I rode over to Fayetteville where I decided to go by the Community College to see if I could catch my friend in between the chemistry classes he teaches to see if he had time for lunch. It turned out that he was between classes, and we had some lunch and chatted for a while until he had to return.

Riding around with no real destination works wonders for me as far as relaxing is concerned. I was/am still angry, but at one point I caught a drifting thought I became determined to capture with words, and I had to pull over to the side of the road in order to write it down.

"I'm the kind of person who gets jacked up so tightly, that I have to spend inordinate amounts of otherwise useful time calming myself down to keep from doing something stupid."

When I wrote "spend inordinate amounts of time", it's not so much of a joke. It could take a few days or a few months or a few years once I get good and mad. Madman.

Some say the nomad is mad,
but the don't understand,
that the nomad must travel
at the madman's command...

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