TIME OUT
OR Get A Little Anger Out?
The little stool was painted red and stood in the corner of our kitchen.
When we were kids, there wasn’t a special stool. Mom would tell us to go and think about what we did—and then apologize. My brothers and I thought it would be much faster if we could just go straight to the spanking and move on.
My kids had to sit on the little red stool—and think about what they did—and apologize. The idea for the stool and its color came from our son’s preschool. The color red was an important disciplinary tool at the school. The teacher would make a “red dot” with a magic marker on the back of a child’s hand if they had misbehaved. Based on the number of red dots, parents immediately knew how school went that day. Our son Derek was no stranger to the red dot.
As I was waiting in the pickup line, I had a feeling that the day didn’t go well. When Derek climbed into the back seat, I could see one large red circle covering his entire hand. He had received so many red dots that they connected. The teacher walked around to the driver’s side of the car and handed me a note. The boys had destroyed the bathroom.
Sequestering yourself in the bathroom to let off a little steam is something I understand. Sometimes you just want a little privacy to make faces into the mirror or pound your fists against something. My favorite is the sound of the toilet seat slamming.
However, my last attempt to get a little anger out was not fulfilling … and I blame ergonomic engineers.
You know how you can press one button to move the car seat to your perfect customized settings, and your husband has his own button for his settings? This is a feature of ergonomic engineering. So is the see-through door with touch light on the refrigerator and the automatic slow-closing drawers and cabinets. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, the purpose of ergonomic engineering is to increase the safety, comfort, and performance of a product or an environment. That all sounds very well and good, but it’s not always the case. Guess what else has a slow close feature … the toilet seat.
Since the day we purchased our house, it has been one big project. Following the popular home-buying advice—“Purchase a fixer upper in the best neighborhood”—we have been working on it for years. The only room that has not been completely renovated is the master bathroom. And this was where I went one afternoon before I yelled something I would later regret.
Slamming the door didn’t produce much of a sound. The fifty-year-old thin laminate interior door closed with a click. I moved on to the cupboard below the sink, where we hadn’t replaced the vanity yet. There was almost no sound at all because the doors were bulging from all the junk I had stuffed under the sink. No luck there. However, I was saving the best for last. Reaching for the lid—and the seat—to create the loudest effect, I immediately realized that we had replaced the toilet! No matter how many times I lifted the lid, it closed slowly … AND QUIETLY!
Sequestering myself in the bathroom did have the desired effect; I got a little anger out. After all my failed slamming attempts, I started to laugh at myself and thought about what I would do the next time.
Perhaps I should bring back the little red stool and take a time out.
