Hail Mary, full of rage

Every time the phone rings, I say a little prayer. Not a literal prayer with words for gods or saints who may be listening from the heavens. But an earnest hope in the fleeting moment before I answer that whoever is calling has merely fair to middling news. 

It’s not as if I cross myself or genuflect, though it does feel like a brief encounter with the superstition that is the last remaining trace of my Catholic school faith. 

And while I believe that none of our problems are new, time and pressure have a way of making us feel as if they are not only novel but also daunting.

It also doesn’t help that the bombardment of news chickens falling from the media sky has us feeling like it’s all just too hard.

Of course, we know we have to do the hard things. We know there may even be some satisfaction with accomplishing the difficult tasks we procrastinate. But there seems to be no end to the hard things that could be easier.

Maybe we always felt this way, too: anxiety and self-doubt can lead us over the bridge to anger, setting a fire that will burn it behind us.

I was thinking about all of this recently as I held on the line for the next available representative, not entirely reassured that my call was, in fact, important to them.

Nor did I believe that if I left my number, and without losing my place, a customer service support staff would call me back.

Still … I had enough to do in the meantime that I left the call to faith.

Not long before this line, I stood in another line at the DMV, having already made a second trip to the location because I didn’t have the right signatures, slowly realizing I may have to make a third pilgrimage for another third-party affirmation buried in the small print.

 And as the pent-up air exited my mouth in an audible sigh, the most amazing thing happened. Someone else in that very same room lost their composure and started a tirade of screaming and swearing that was nowhere near as funny as The Dad in “A Christmas Story” shaking a wrench in the air after he walked into the kitchen – from trying to fix the “clunker” in the basement – to find at the Bumpus’s Turkey-stealing dogs – made it look.

This rage wasn’t a laughing matter. 

Yet, from the look on the face of the agent assisting me in my registration conundrum, it was something that happened all the time. Moreover, it was something she could readily expect from just about anyone, including me.

I suddenly regretted the sound of my body’s depressurization. 

I regretted not keeping a closer leash on my feelings, but I quickly hushed my instinct to bark and growl.

In that moment I could see the bigger picture and my small, privileged place in it. Eventually, this will all be solved one way or another, and fighting the person helping me wasn’t going to help either of us.

It is our lot in life, sometimes, to be inconvenienced. The only thing we can control is how we react when hardship, or customer service, calls back.