I Need To Master Anger Management

Today I went to a cafe to get lunch for take out.  May be it's a sunday so the cafe was a lot more crowded than usual.  There were a lot of people standing around waiting to order or waiting for their spouses or family to order.  I personally had never seen a crowd standing in front of the cashier before.  As a caregiver, my mind is always occupied and I often am not mindful at the present as I need to be. Today is just one of those moments when I walked into the cafe, seeing such a big crowd that I had never seen before.  I had no idea where the line ended and I just stood at a spot that I thought was the end of a supposedly queue, waiting.  Suddenly I noticed a guy moved up to my left and he murmured something about the end of a line. I thought he just arrived and asked me if I was standing in line, so I said, "Yes"....  I honestly didn't know exactly what his entire question was about, I just assumed.  My mind was preoccupied with the rest of the errand list of items that I had to do for the day.  Nothing happened as the crowd moved along. As I moved blindly with the crowd until I was behind a mixed couple who were ordering at the cashier,  I mistakenly thought the Asian wife was done as she moved aside, so I moved forward, and the cashier told me the Asian lady who moved aside hadn't finished her order yet and she was just moving over to look at the pastry cabinet to see what were there that she could add to her order.  To me, it was not a big deal, so I stepped back.  It was then  when a guy on my right started to yell at me angrily, "You just like cutting into people's line! Don't you?"  I was very offended by his rude behavior because I didn't think I cut into anyone's line at that moment because I stepped back to my place when the cashier told me it wasn't my turn yet.  I told the guy, "I didn't cut into the line, I thought it was my turn because she moved aside, and the cashier told me the order wasn't complete so I came back."  He then yelled, "Don't play stupid, you did it over and over! Blah blah blah"  I said "blah blah" because he wasn't speaking in the standard English and I couldn't understand his words clearly. At this moment, I just felt a rush of anger in me, as if someone had pushed my button.  May be I wasn't even that angry at the guy who unfairly accused me and who yelled at me.  May be I was angry at somethinig else that had been accumulating in my chest for a long time.  But at that moment, I lost my cool and I engaged with this rude white man who had a very heavy Southern accent.  I'm not sure if it was Alabama or Tennessee or Georgia or Texas.   I had made the mistake to engage with him.  I should have just ignored him right at the beginning.  But I wasn't quite myself either. I felt I had been so mistreated and misunderstood that I just couldn't take it anymore.  So I flipped.  But my negative reaction and argument with this guy didn't make things better for myself or make this guy less rude.  I finally recognized that this was the same guy who earlier walked up from my left side when I entered the cafe and said something to me about a line.  Then I realized may be I had accidentally cut into his place when I first walked in mindlessly.  But even if I did, I wasn't intentional.  But the more I defended myself, the more the guy yelled at me.  So eventually, when the lady in front of me finished her order, I told the guy, "Now, go ahead of me and make your order, because I don't want you to whine about how I cut you off in the line."  The guy went nuts on me after I said that, and he just wouldn't let go of his rude yelling and accusation that I was in the wrong and I cut pepole off their line.  At that moment, whatever little EQ left in me immediately recognized that this guy must have anger issues himself and it would be really stupid of me  to continue to engage him. So I shut up after his yelling and I waited for him to finish his order and walked away, before I walked up to make my order.  There were people turning their heads at me when this rude guy was screaming at me.  I realized this rude white man from the South and I had made quite a scene at the cafe.  I felt so embarrassed.

I was boiling with anger for the embarrassement that this rude country dude brought upon the two of us.  I was mad at how I was unfairly screamed at for no good freaking reason, even if  it could be just a misunderstanding.   As I felt depressed at how I was unlucky again to have met such a petty and narcissistic man while standing at the self-serve condiment counter, waiting for my take out,  another big guy (who sounded like a Syrian) walked towards me and told me in a very friendly manner, "I thought you and that crazy guy were a couple, because he had been standing behind you the whole time."  I said, "Thank god, we aren't, he seemed to have a serious anger issue, even though I may not be any more normal than him."  This big man said with a smile, "No, you are very normal, he is the nutty one.  Don't waste engergy on him, I saw what happened to you the entire time while I was standing behind my wife (the Asian lady who ordered in front of me), that man was in the wrong, not you.  Don't let him ruin your day.  We all saw the whole thing."  I immediately felt all the unjust that I had suffered for the last 15 minutes had all at once disappeared, and I said to this man, "Oh, thank you very much, you are so very kind."  He smiled and petted my shoulder before he walked back to his wife and parents-in-law's table.  Even karma had taken my side because even though I let the rude guy go ahead of me to order first, the cafe got my order all packed up for me to take home before this rude guy got his order. I was walking to my car while this rude man who unjustly accused me was sitting at his table, all  by himself, waiting for his order, flippng his mobile phone.  Now, what's the point of him making a fuss about the line?

What happened to me today reminds me that a little more tolerance and understanding will just make this whole world so much more peaceful. While there are plenty of nasty people in this world, there are even more nice people around.  And often, I can afford to take my steps back and things will  still work out in the right order in life.  So, there is really no need to stress and to calculate. I don't know why so many people have anger issues today.  May be because of the stress of daily living that we all have to endure.  As fast as I could point my finger at another person's rude behavior and anger issue, only God knows what he had been through  himself to prompt him into flipping out like this.   I should have reacted to him in a less negative manner, may be if I had given the angry guy a smile or a generous apology (whether or not he deserved it), he would have walked away less angry.  Now in retrospect, that angry man could have hit me. I'm grateful that for whatever anger issues he had at the moment, he was still mindful enough to not go that uncontrollably mad.   Yes, people at the cafe would call the police for me, or may even jump in to protect me.  But still, any strike at me would have been a very undesirable outcome for me.  Next time, I will have to remember to stay kind and  positive no matter what and to not be dingy in giving out an apology even if I am not in the wrong.