I hate confrontation. I hate being angry, and more importantly I hate knowing that someone else is angry at me. I hate it so much I’m even a little skittish about honking–I hesitate to honk to remind someone a stop light has turned green. When someone yells (or honks) at me, I get this sinking feeling like, “I’m not a bad person, honest. Don’t hate me, please!” While I certainly could improve on avoiding confrontation (or at least initiating it), I want to focus more on keeping myself composed during confrontation. Nothing looks stupider or more immature than a person angrily talking down to another person. Well ok, I’m sure there are plenty of other more stupid looking things a person can do, but this is pretty high on the list. Today, had the confrontation not been my fault, I would have been rather proud of the way I handled the situation. I managed to remain calm and talk lower and slower than the aggravated woman yelling at me.
Let me back up and explain the situation. I was walking to my car when a woman pulled up near me. She was obviously trying to park in the spot I was walking through, and she clearly wasn’t happy about waiting. Now I’m no expert on shrugs, but the shrug she gave me was very much directed straight at me and said something to the effect of “What the hell are you doing in my spot!? Get out-the way before I run you down!” So naturally I gave her an innocent “What did I do?” shrug.
She returned the same accusatory shrug.
So I shrugged back, mimicking her a little more this time. She returned it again! Whatever, I continued on to my car. The woman pulled into her spot, rolled down her window, and yelled “Do you have to walk so slow!”
Before I could stop myself I blurted out “Do you have to be an ass?”
(Now at this point, dear readers, I would like to point out that I know I shouldn’t have said anything. So please, there’s no reason to call me out on it.) The woman started yelling something at me that I can’t remember except that it ended with “..and you’re just a minor, you can’t talk to an adult that way!”
Wait, wait, wait… Now I know my acne is a little out of control (thank you very much Accutane), but I am not a minor. Besides that, we all know my feelings on using your age as a means to gauge respect… Oh, I guess I haven’t written that post yet. Well I will, and then we will know my position about using your age to gauge the amount of respect you deserve (hint: age doesn’t mean shit to mean when it comes to how much I respect you).
Now maybe I should have just walked away, but for some reason I thought to myself, this situation isn’t right and I’m going to do something about it. So I approached her car. When she got out I said “I think maybe there has been a misunderstanding.”
“You bet there’s a misunderstanding!”
“I was just walking in front of you and it seemed like you shrugged like I had done something wrong.”
The woman then ranted on and on about how maybe she was just talking to her daughter about her husband (who, from the sound of it, rented some expensive porn behind her back), and that I must have a pretty big head for thinking everything was about me. Well maybe I do have a large melon, I don’t know, but what I do know is that even if the shrug was not intended for me, the snarky remark was totally uncalled for. Regardless, I simply said “Well that’s not how I interpreted it and I’m sorry we had this misunderstanding.”
That didn’t seem to appease her though and she continued to ream me. So I finally stopped her and said, “I don’t think you understand. I’m apologizing to you.”
A breakthrough; we shook hands and went on our merry little way. I was so rattled after the encounter, though, when I got in my car I was shaking so much I could hear my foot bouncing away on the gas peddle. What is it that drives two complete strangers to face off like that? Well, not exactly like that because that particular argument was only heated on one side. I’m talking about these people you see in public just going at it like animals. Why? The other day I saw a van hit a guy on a bike. No kidding! He ran smack into this guy, tossing him to the asphalt and dragging his bike under the car. The biker got up and started cursing like mad (and rightfully so), but the surprising thing was that the guy in the van got out and started yelling back at him! It was like neither party would admit fault, and the really worrying thing about it was that the guy in the van’s first reaction wasn’t something like “Jesus Christ! Are you ok!?”
So it seems I will never be able to completely avoid arguing with a total stranger, but with practice, I want to always come out the winner. The lady I argued with today probably went home thinking she’d schooled me, but she looked like an ass doing it. I may have apologized to a total douche, but I did it without raising my blood pressure.
My experience has shown me that the person who can control their emotions and stays calm seems to feel the most satisfied after a confrontation.
The person who loses control of their emotions usually regrets their behavior once they reflect back on the encounter.
Controlling one’s emotions sure makes life easier and nicer. And besides, making one enemy is one too many, but you can never make enough friends.
I’m the same way with confrontation, I avoid it, I hate it and I think in most cases it is unnecessary. That’s not to say I’m afraid of it. As you said “I want to focus more on keeping myself composed during confrontation.” The person who can remain calm and make logical arguments in an intense situation is usually the one who is better off.
Because of my job I deal with someone screaming at me at least once a month for something that is obviously there fault. They know it, I know it, but their goal is only to shift responsibility for their actions to being my fault. It’s often comical how if you stay calm and point out the fallacies in their arguments it will upset them more and make them storm off.
I think most people start yelling to give there argument more power because they know it is weak to start with, and if they can get you upset it justifies them. To quote Theodore Roosevelt “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”