Hit or miss?

Have you ever felt like hitting someone? You know, just waling in and whacking hard? I often do. But, always keeping Mum’s maxim in mind – she insisted that ladies do not get physically violent, they decimate with a look or, at most, a mild word – I resist, even though it can get incredibly difficult, especially with the level of provocation I tend to attract, at work, at home, on the road. Maybe it is my face, maybe my body language, maybe my own uptightness. I think, most of all, it is because I am almost compulsively insistent on doing things just right, just so, just up to standard.

Father gave me a potted lecture on it the other night. According to him, I take things to seriously. More relevantly, I take myself too seriously. I think he is right. I do. Chill, he advised, though not in that word, of course. And I did. So yesterday, in spite of working later than usual, in spite of being seriously aggravated by various people and issues at work, in spite of being tired and hungry and so crabby and in spite of wanting nothing more than to go home and lie down in a darkened room, I smiled, cheerfully, I waited, cheerfully and I endured, cheerfully, the long and tedious intervals between bursts of whatever I was actually doing, doing nothing. And as I walked in the front door at home, long after I normally do, I smiled, cheerfully, and announced that I was very calm. There may have been a hint of gritted teeth and clenched fists in the declaration, but I did it. Cheerfully.

At many moments during the over-long day I was sorely tempted to hit someone. Not an anonymous, generic ‘someone’, but a real, flesh-and-blood, bone-and-muscle someone who is better nameless, faceless and mention-less. I get the craving often and feel the urgent and intense need to satisfy that need by actually, for a change, doing something about it. But what Mum mandated pops into my head and I can only wiggle my fingers deep into the pockets of my favourite jeans and smile. Cheerfully.

But just consider how it would feel. The surge of energy that moves from the brain to the fist, down the arm and along the wrist, through the fingers and even into the nails. That same energy sparked into action through an upraised arm, a stretched out hand, splayed fingers and stiffened shoulder. And then, finally – aaahh, the wonder of it all – the contact of your skin and muscle and bone against the other person’s cheek and the fabulous clap of noise that follows to reverberate against your eardrum…I was never a violent person, but that has to be a good feeling. Some day I will find out.

Actually I do know already. While I have lightly slapped a couple of people to stop their hysteria, I once really, truly, satisfyingly hit someone, purely involuntarily, which took all the pleasure out of the action, best done premeditatedly. It was when I was in school and the class bully was taking it that wee bit too far with me. Before I knew what I was doing, my arm swung out and my hand made a fabulously loud connection with my enemy’s face. I am not sure who was more stunned by that, her or me, but it did the trick. She never bothered me again and her tone to me changed if ever we spoke. The tiny, impulsive violence worked. That was enough for me.