(262) Rage

This morning Elizabeth, my youngest, asked if she did something bad in her childhood and tried to cover up. ( The question is the result of some rather "nosy" bible study question her youth group subscribed to. I was lucky to have only accepted Christ at age 24, so the youth organization era was not in my past.)

Well! Elizabeth was tiny in size but rather hot tempered many years ago. Her closest friend Cassandra at age seven nursed some wounds for about a week until I heard from the mother. Apparently Cassandra knowingly goaded Elizabeth into scratching her at the wrist. The interesting part was Cassandra was at my house for three evenings a week but I failed to notice the bandage. Probably it was the left wrist and she was quite good at hiding it from me.

I dare say both girls were at fault. But Cassandra's mom was adamant that the young girl was teasing and goading to see how Elizabeth would react. The practical and sensible mother felt that it was a relief that it was my daughter who merely scratched the aggressor. Imagine if the victim swing a filled mineral water bottle at Cassandra's head! Of course I went home and gave Elizabeth the third degree for scratching a playmate. I taught her to turn around and walk off, it is far smarter to ignore such a person, even if it was her best friend.

Now! The reason I blog this is not to show my readers how bad or good my child was in the past or is at present. Usually the first sign I spot in a recovered learning disabled adult is the disproportionate reaction to being forced, coerced, victimized or being made to feel injustice. Well, the last time I gave my husband a good dressing down was when he asked me an ungrammatical question,"Water boil ah?" early one morning when I was bustling around trying to accomplish a few tasks in order to leave the house for the day. What he really meant was: "Did I turn off the fire and actually forgot about it?" I took it that he was unreasonable enough to expect me to drop everything to boil more drinking water. I collected the water bottles and could not find my jug. He was unwise enough to put real lemon to soak in a plastic jug. A volcano erupted and he was still trying to shake sleep off his head, all he wanted to know was if I had turned off the fire under a whistling kettle. My daughter said he deserved the shelling as he could have just stepped into the kitchen and touched the kettle rather than irritate  me early in the morning.