P and I have season tickets at Chelsea Football Club. It has to be said that P’s enthusiasm for the game is not unqualified but, as gesture of willingness and spousal compromise she indulges me. Recently she came home to tell me that an irritating senior colleague (“ISC”) of hers had asked whether he could sit in her seat when Chelsea play his team later in the season. Giving up her seat is no great sacrifice for P so she agreed and informed me that I was going to have to play host. She gave me a stern warning as the last time this happened I chaperoned the son of another of P’s colleagues. He told me, untruthfully, that he was 18, expressed an enthusiasm for all things beer-related and when I delivered him to his mother he proceeded to projectile vomit in front of her before collapsing drunkenly in the backseat of the car. ISC, however, is into his 50s and presumably has the measure by now of his own tolerance for alcohol.
ISC is of an earlier generation of barristers who prided themselves on making submissions laced with theatrically-expressed if oblique put-downs of their opponents. It may seem odd that people ever took a professional pride in being a wanker but it is still surprisingly common. Needless to say, I am not relishing an afternoon at the match with him.
This evening I had a call from P who is in Brighton visiting a friend. I asked her how her day had gone.
P: “Oh it was awful. ISC barely escaped with his life. I was having a tough time with 6 people asking me to do things at once. ISC was representing one of the other parties and rather than help me he spent his time making snide interjections and embarrassing me in Court in order to show off to his clients. I was so upset. Really, I could have throttled him”.
M: “Is this ISCÂ that I am taking to the football?”
P: “Yes”
At this point the work of several hundered thousand years of painstaking evolutionary advancement fell away from me. I actually began to seethe with anger; hair grew on the backs of my hands and I ground my teeth till they cracked. I felt P had more than enough to be dealing with at the moment without one of her own colleagues being a prick to her. Using some very florid langauge I suggested P should inform him that he lacked the attributes of a gentleman, indicate that an apology would be welcome and make it clear that he should put the prospect of attending the game entirely from his mind (I used fewer but more colorful words to convey all this). I went on to point out that if he did come to the game he could expect that there would be one or two things that I would want to say to him.
P asked me to calm down. “It’s just how he is” she said tolerantly. “I’ll get over it soon enough. I don’t want you tackling him over it”.
Tackling him? Thrashing him was more what I had in mind. Fighting a duel, smacking him in his pompous barrister’s face; beating him with a table leg – I didn’t much care as long as it involved ultra violence and his coughing an apology to P from behind broken teeth and swollen lips. This is all bonkers. No doubt in an hour’s time I will wonder how I could have had this reaction. I will return to writing my apercus into my little leather-bound notebook with a fine nib and sipping a medium sherry as I ponder a poem or two. I will reflect that P is a tough cookie and perfectly capable of putting an obnoxious opponent straight without her husband lumbering in mouthing obscenities and empty threats. Nevertheless I am at present flooded with testosterone and barking like a walrus.
Has anyone else ever suffered an unexpected regression to troglodyte social skills?
Oh…no doubt. More so when something happens with my kiddos.
I almost throttled a little punk on the opposing soccer team last Saturday after he pushed Bubber down and then smiled like some friggin psycho and then just walked off (this was not during game play). I literally balled up my fists and felt ready to chase after him and push him to the ground and then smile and say “How you like dem apples punk?
Instead…I did the “right thing” and walked over to said kiddo and his parent…explained what happened and demanded he apologize. He did…but let me tell ya…I WANTED TO KICK HIS SMUG LITTLE ASS!
I have seen hubby get near the point though in regards to me being wronged…especially towards a guy I work with who is a COMPLETE ass and always stabs me in the back. But…he knows I can hold my own and use my smarts to mess with the guy…
I think it’s TOTALLY natural though for men to feel fierce protective urges towards the women they love. I think it’s kinda sexy actually and would be a bad bad thing to lose…unless of course it borders on psychosis…ya know…like serial killer level or something!
Oh God, please tell me he’s not a Man U fan – make him a Liverpool supporter… please!
Bec – he is a Watford fan
When the Mack was in kindergarten she had a classmate who would pick on her. I’m talking stomping on her hand, pushing her down, and, on one memorable occasion, punching her in the face and giving her a black eye.
The latter was the last straw for me; up until then I’d been dealing with the teacher in a very civilized manner, but this event caused the husband to actually have to hide my car keys so I wouldn’t go lay in wait for the kid and his mom after school. I was planning to beat that lady to within an inch of her life – and I would have, too – but wiser heads prevailed, and by the end of the year the teacher’s intervention had worked and he was a nice, well-behaved little boy.
Who knew? Niceness, it works.
Now, on asshole barristers, I suggest a Louisville slugger and some Ex-Lax in his tea.
A few months back someone called me a weak, brainwashed fool. Like Jen and almost every other mother on this planet, I usually reserve my manic, come-closer-so-I-can-rip-your-effing-head-off anger for attacks on my children. But I had taken enough abuse from this person. Had she been within arm’s reach, I might have landed myself in jail. Instead, I spewed hate vomit all across the page of an email and then hit sent. OOOO! God, but I felt like such a Neanderthal afterward.
Rrrr Arrrr
Oh, all the time. I am quite the hooligan when it comes to my loved ones. I was bullied for a long time at school, and did very little about it until the bully began taunting my sister.
She stumbled away with a broken nose and a chipped collarbone.
A few weeks ago my husband was speaking to his twin brother on the phone and got into a particularly heated argument- which is the norm. however, when his brother threatened to wipe the ‘smug look off his face’ I threatened to do the same to him. With a baseball bat. I would’ve done as well if he’d been in the same room.
Did I mention his brother is an armed policeman and trained sniper?
When me and my sister went to Brownie camp a big fat bully swung a swing into my sister’s face and gave her a bruise that made her look like a raccoon. I was really annoyed and rounded up a gang of my friends and we danced around the big fat bully and called her a big fat bully. It was quite primitive, and it rattled her. But then she told on us to Brown Owl and we got into trouble, because apparently calling someone names is worse than scarring someone for life – er – a fortnight.
me? no. how dare you suggest such a thing…..
although i would have politely told him to fuck off and that i’d rather stick pins in my eyes that let him have the spare seat.
No need to be violent or nasty to the giot but I do think polite withdrawal of the seat is called for. Things we do have consequences.
Y’know Moobs, there’s that handy bit of the bible which explains that being nice to your enemy is the equivalent of pouring hot coals over his head. (No, I’ve never understood it either: real hot coals would be more saitisfying.) Have experienced “Neanderthal rising” myself especially when we were first married and living in a hostel in Tooting which R also managed. Very, very difficult every day to go out to work past the bitchy receptionist who has been making life difficult for your wife. One day I didn’t manage to control myself – and R was very cross at me for making her life more difficult. Hopefully Chelsea will thrash Watford – and you can sit beside him through the match energetically and tunefully casting doubts on their players’ and fans’ paternity, seemingly oblivious to his presence next to you. Ensure the guys next to you sing and shout their loudest and crudest too. Could be huge fun.
Moobs you’re fab. You have made an incandescent walrus impersonation sound sexy.
Once, when I was driving home from getting new tires on my car, a wheel rolled casually off and overtook me causing my steering and brakes to fail, all on a huge, busy roundabout. The chaps at the garage hadn’t tightened the screws at all (nuts? bolts? I’m very hazey when it comes to auto mechanics). In fact, when we looked, they were just placed on all four wheels, not even finger-tightened. I phoned the mild mannered Mr Splog to let him know what had happened and could he come and rescue me please. I think he broke the sound barrier on the (normally) 40 minute drive back in his utter terror and fury about what their slap-dashery could have caused. It really did seem as though he’d got back, rescued me, taken me home and bawled out the garage all before the errant wheel had rolled to a stop. My hero!
Gotta love the manly instinct of protecting the woman folk. I figure watching Chelsea cream Watford should be extra satisfying, and helpful to the Blades too, which is nice.
I like the image of neanderthal man using e-mail.
Wow Moobs, I didn’t know you had this macho caveman side to you. I am like you, when someone has really been incredibly obnoxious, I seeth and punch walls and scream obscentities, but not to their face. And, it seems to get it out of my system.
As a barrister, you will be pleased to know that prison really is a deterrent for me. I would rather die, I really would, than share a cell with anyone, let alone piss in a bucket or work in a laundry room or whateve else they do in women’s prisons (all info gleaned from Prisoner Cell Block H). So while I would sometimes quite like to smash someone’s face in, I don’t, because I am not peeing in front of anyone, not in my lifetime.
You’re such a good, loving, sweet husband. Your reaction is very normal, I would think. P is quite lucky to have a man who cares so much.
I almost used a sack of potatoes to beat a woman senseless who cut in front of me in the supermarket line. Instead I rammed her cart lightly and gave her the evil eye.
Does this count?
All the time… but does it truly count as regression if one is defending loved ones? I hope not!
I think it’s delightful that your innate Bigfoot tendancies (think big hairy guy who live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States) are coming out! Just in time for the race! Well done Moobs! You’ll place under 2 hrs for sure!
P.S. You know every “evolved” woman says that she hates the troglodite but I think we all secretly long for it in our men. We just give you crap about it to keep our contract with the feminist board.
Watford? Watford? Not like he even supports a ‘proper’ football team is it 😉
People are dumb. That’s all I got today.
High five for sticking up (even if it was just getting your feathers ruffled a bit) for your wife. She is a lucky one.