I have a joke that I carry a roll of duct tape in my pocket because sometimes I need to put it over my mouth.  I call my son, Jeff, the King of Righteous Anger – an example is when he was still a teen he stepped forward to chastise a person who was being unnecessarily rude to a teenage checkout girl at a drugstore.  He came by this foolish behavior naturally, his mother being the Queen.  The problem with this is that sometimes it slips over into the realm of judgement, and we need to always consider that perhaps the person who is being an ass at the checkout stand may have an underlying cause (losing a job, losing a child to disease, whatever) that is making them be such an ass.  None of us is immune from taking out our frustrations, anger or sorrow on the wrong person at the wrong time.

Usually, though, we call it righteous anger for a reason – the person is JUST an ass.  Something really IS just not right.  Someone NEEDS to be chastised.  On the other hand, I am getting too old for this, and someday Jeff will too.  The problem with being a Righteous Anger Superhero is that often times the person or issue just doesn’t give a damn what you think.  I hate that.  It demoralizes me.  The Pope is a prime example.  Can you believe I actually sent the Pope an email about the latest women/ordination proclamation?  I know this is hard to believe but I didn’t get a reply yet.  OK,  I believe that the collective grass roots has power, but right now I feel like I just lost a few of my lifetime allotment of cells to stressing out and railing about it.  My Dad used to say don’t get into it with a skunk or you’ll end up smelling like one.  Dad was the carrier of the righteous anger gene in our immediate family, so he knew what he was talking about. 

I have found the virtual duct tape to be quite helpful.  I have a little post-it on my computer monitor of a smiley face with duct tape over her mouth, to remind me to take it out of my “pocket” and place it on the desk next to my keyboard whenever I find myself on a discussion board.  When I say “please pass the duct tape” in a public place, my friends all start to laugh as they imagine what it is I am NOT saying.  In many ways my virtual duct tape has saved me a lot of stress.  Sometimes I find myself unable to contain myself and end up in the phone booth changing into my RA Woman suit, (hmmm…a RAW t-shirt….hmmm….) but in general I’ve found that using the duct tape has stopped me from smelling like a skunk on many occasions, even when I was angry, damn angry,  and righteously so.