I Lost My Temper

Many years ago, one of my landlord’s sons tried to play a fast one on me.  It was at night, there was power outage and I was holding a flash-light which he asked me to borrow him. Without hesitation, I gave it to him. To my surprise, he had changed the batteries of the flash light. Perhaps, he thought I wouldn’t notice.  How could someone be in so much haste to betray the trust a young boy had invested in him? I felt disappointed and cheated by this so called big brother.

I had to voice out my displeasure about what this brother, my landlord’s son had done.  Overwhelmed by anger, I had to ask him why he swapped my batteries; because when I gave him the flash light it was still bright and the batteries shouldn’t have got drained so fast. I was surprised to see the brightness of the flash light become so dim so fast.  While expressing myself in annoyance, his younger sister “invited herself” into the conversation, wanting to advocate for her “innocent” brother, her unwelcome contribution provoked me the more such that I had to unleash the anger of the offence of her elder brother on her- without delay, I slapped her.

After slapping her, she tried to retaliate, but someone cautioned her. Other people who were eye witnesses blamed her for poke-nosing. Within a short while, she had started bleeding from the nose as a result of the slap from my angered hand. Unfortunately there was nothing she could do to me as she had to embrace her fate. I could not withdraw the slap.

As a teenager, I often struggled with my emotions, especially anger. The above scenario is just one out of the countless number of times I lost my temper while I was much younger. I battled with anger. It was such a serious struggle for me. Anger was more like a companion and often time when I got angry, I would be shaking and my heart would start beating faster.  I would easily get angry and keep malice effortlessly.

However, the story has changed because I have lost that flair for anger. In fact, my temperament has become more like a direct opposite of what it used to be. I would share with you how this transformation took place; some of the things I observed or noted were responsible for the kind of temperament I displayed then, and the things I did to make necessary corrections. Hmmm…how I lost my temper…I bet you don’t want to miss the next post.

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