By David Shapiro
By David Shapiro
I always thought football players took steroids to build their muscles. Now I know it's more about building a rotten disposition.
I've been on a short course of prednisone the last couple of weeks to treat an inflammation. I don't know how my inflamed neural pathways are doing, but I know that it's made me mean. Real mean.
So mean that when the affable Charles Memminger plopped into my office and re-tuned my guitar from slack key to regular tuning, I felt like my head was going to explode unless I killed him. And that was before I had to listen to the big guy play.
The only thing that stopped me from striking out was that my malicious thoughts turned to our former artist Vint Blackburn, who re-tuned the old Martin so many times that he stretched the strings into rubber bands. Vint didn't keep his promise to install new strings before moving to Detroit. So who do I still know in Detroit who could make spaghetti out of the old strings and feed them to Vint with a pitchfork?
I can see how this would be a useful state of mind if you were on a football field with Emmitt Smith coming at you and you had to bring him down. But in a business setting, it could get you into real trouble. I'll bet the judge would have slapped my wrist with a vengeance if I had attacked Memminger.
It's amazing how put upon you can feel about the littlest annoyances with this hormonal ferocity rushing through your blood stream. There is no question about what's at the center of the universe Σ ME. You have no conscience, no regard for anything decent except in terms of how it affects ME. Do I have to do ALL the work around here?
I was enraged when I arrived at work and found somebody parked in my stall. I stomped around the lot cursing that of the 10 empty stalls on either side of me the cad had to pick mine. He ALWAYS picks mine.
I thought of a movie a couple of years ago in which a college football player pumped up on steroids went on a rampage through the parking lot smashing windows with his head. I finally got carried away with myself and gave my side window a whack.
As the concerned security guard rushed over, I learned three things: (1) Foreheads bruise easily; (2) Windows don't give easily; and (3) Breaking windows with your head is less a function of steroids than of having neck muscles that can bench press 500 pounds.
My boss didn't sense my mood the day we were three hours late with our Internet edition and kept calling every five minutes complaining that he couldn't go to lunch until the problem was solved. It could have only been the ghost of Lyle Alzado, patron saint of pathetic steroid abusers, who kept me from going upstairs and feeding him his phone for lunch.
Even my dear, sweet mother caught it when she tried to give me advice on how to handle the steroids. Usually I listen politely and say, "Thank you for still caring about my well-being after all these years." This time I cut her off short, wondering if she would rather be fed her advice with a spoon or intravenously.
The last medication I took for this caused depression. I'm here to report that hostile aggression beats the heck out depression. With depression, you sulk around thinking up horrible ways to do yourself in. With hostile aggression, you enthusiastically plot ways to do other people in.
And I've got to tell you, some of these schemes I've cooked up are too good not to carry out even after the animosity wears off.
Oh, I forgot to ask. How was your week?
3/23/96
