Temper, Temper
Matt Seinberg

Nothing exciting happened this week, other than remodeling the bathroom. Part 3 of that will have to wait for next week.

Traffic-light demons at work.

How many times has something happened at the exact wrong moment and it just sets you off that nothing would have stopped it? Your day was bad and some yutz, a Yiddish word for ditz, decided to do something so stupid that your head was about ready to explode?

Come on; admit it. You get mad. Yes, it's happened to me a time or many and my family would just shake their collective heads, sigh and walk away. I have a temper, but as I get older, I try to ignore those little things that used to set me off.

I have had nothing but bad luck with traffic lights for the past couple of weeks. That is to say, I've missed all the greens and hit all the reds. I'll see the light green from a short distance; watch it turn yellow and finally red. There is no way I'm running a red light, as there are far too many red light cameras here, on Long Island. Those tickets can be hefty and I'm not paying the county one-cent because of a stupid mistake.

The first few I took in stride, but as it kept happening, it felt like the traffic light demons were laughing at me and hoping I'd blow my top, so they could see everything explode inside my car. I kept my cool; what did it cost me? Only a few minutes in the grand scheme of things and I still wasn't late to where ever I was going.

I believe my family does things on purpose to see if they can watch my head blow off. When the kids don't clean their rooms, it drives my wife crazy; she harangues them until they do it. Me, I don't really care. It's when I ask them to do specific things and they don't, then they best watch out.

My daughters are so different, I think they are from different parents.

I am truly over having my head explode. It raises my blood pressure and leaves me in a foul mood. Something truly stupendous and stupid has to happen for that to occur now.

My kids are different in so many ways that I often wonder how they come to be blood-relatives, especially in their temperaments. Michelle and I can have an argument. She gets over it quickly; she’ll be snuggly, again, rather fast.

Melissa, on the other hand, will hold a grudge, unless I apologize, even if she's wrong. Huh? She hates when I get mad and will hold that against me. We'll often apologize at the same time, but it could take a day or so before she's fully over it.

If my kids don't talk to me, I'll do anything to make them get over it, be it making them laugh by making a funny face or saying something silly. That works more on Michelle than Melissa, but I don't give up easily.

Melissa just came down to bother me and saw her name on the screen. She wants to read this. I told her she could read it when it's public. Melissa insists I email this column to her. She’s a royal vonce, a Yiddish word for bedbug.

Why did we ever have kids? I think a house full of cats may have been easier.

When my wife is mad at me, I stay quiet.

Now, if my wife is mad at me, I stay quiet until she decides to break the silence. That could be quickly or not. Have you heard about "the bedtime rule?" That says couples shouldn't go to sleep mad. In our house, that doesn't always work. My wife and I are both stubborn, so who knows how long that argument could go on?

One last observation, I'm not prone to road rage, but when I see people on the phone or texting in their cars that makes me mad, but I'm not about to call the cops or stop them. I was coming to a stop sign the other day and I saw a woman in an SUV on her phone not even slowing down, much less stopping. She just blew right through it as if no one else was around.

She’s the type of person that will have an accident and lie about what she was doing. Eventually, some traffic cam will catch exactly what she was doing.

Karma can be a real bitch.