Does This Attitude Make My Ego Look Fat?

Back when I lived in St. Louis, my friend Terri and I occasionally visited a bar called Attitudes after work.  Our evening shifts in ICU meant we didn't arrive until midnight, so we only had two hours for our Attitude Adjustment.  It was almost always enough.

A few of the patrons' attitudes occasionally adjusted in the wrong direction and there'd be a scuffle, but the music was so loud we often had no clue a fight was even brewing.  We'd squint across the dance floor or pool table or bathroom line, nodding mutely at people who appeared to be screaming.  Raucous laughter usually ensued, but if the inaudible rant ended with a fist swinging at anybody's head - you knew it was a fight.

The owner, Roxanne, always helped the fist-swinging girls adjust those attitudes on the street.  "Be nice, or else!" she'd yell as she tossed them outside.

I recently signed up for an Attitude Development class because even friendly people need occasional attitude tweakages, and I've not lived in St. Louis for quite a while.  While it's not a potential post-retirement hobby, a good attitude just makes everything a little better.

With the notable exception of this particular class.

It was held in an old downtown library with marble staircases and glass-walled meeting rooms on the second floor.   The total stranger gatherings all looked alike, so I stuck my head in one door and learned it was a writing group.  Fun!  I asked what kind of writing they did and was informed by a creepy woman that if I had qualified for this group, I would have received an invitation.

That hurt.  So I offered her an invitation to the Adjust-Your-Attitude class if I ever found it.  I stomped away under the watchful glare of every other group.

I found the right room and tried coaxing my attitude back onto its happy perch, but it was demanding I leave.  I stayed - believing the instructor would understand better than most people how to be nice.

Silly me.

There were only two other classmates, and it was plain that neither had smiled for at least a decade.  The teacher mentioned a fourth attendee who had gone to move her car and was "probably not coming back."

This worried me a lot.  Were she and her car impounded?  Was she eaten by the writing group?

I thought about moving my own car - back to my home where everything loves me.

My attitude laughed sarcastically.  We are totally fine, remember?  Being on display in an aquarium is fun!

I soon realized that I should have listened to whatever my attitude argues with so often - my instincts, maybe.  Because my attitude did, indeed, develop with everything that teacher said - but in the wrong direction.

Hearing the teacher's messages felt like taking a weird drug for a condition that isn't really a disease.  The weird drug must first give you the disease before proving that it can cure you.

The teacher announced that everybody with a bad attitude simply needed to stop worrying so much.  "There have always been wars and there will always be wars, so get over it."

My attitude adjustment began with both ears trying desperately to cover themselves before realizing they don't have hands.

I asked the obvious question.  Don't you agree that wars are caused by too much testosterone?

The teacher sneered.  His hormones sensed a challenge!

I worried that if I didn't offer a quick explanation, I'd be thrown to the writers.  (Although I felt certain this man could not actually lift me, I have always been mesmerized by those reports of rage-soaked, adrenaline-fueled, Volkswagen-tossers.)

I continued.  I just think if women ruled more countries, there would be less war.

Now the teacher laughed loudly.  "You show me one major country on this whole entire planet with a woman elected leader, and we'll have something to talk about!"

His logic, as well as his sentence structure, confused me almost as much as whatever the reason was for inventing testosterone in the first place.

Um, right.  My point exactly.  Thanks for clearing that up.  At least my attitude was not ignoring its entire supply of polite just yet.

He ignored me and went on.  "And there's always gonna be hungry children in the world, so you can't cure everything for everybody."

I felt my ears actually start growing their own hands, but was able to stop them before they got past the wrist stage.  I blinked a lot - not to hold back the tears that girls always cry as proof that they can't lead the world.  I blinked because my eyelashes thought the words were actually flying directly at them, as fully formed as any bits of toxic debris ever spewed from any inanimate factory on earth.

I stood slowly and smiled in a way that I hoped imparted Developing a Serial Killer's Attitude.

"What," the teacher said, "did I offend you again?  Is world hunger a man problem, too?"

My instincts wrestled my attitude to the mat and made me leave before I could take a swing at the teacher's head that would get us both tossed through eight panes of glass for an out-on-the-street adjustment.

I strolled calmly to Angry Writer Fishbowl with important information.  I just remembered a standing invitation with my desk, so I am going home to write whilst you chat amongst yourselves.

The building was just as beautiful on the way out, but all that marble seemed a little greedy.  Weren't there any hungry people in 1918?

A really nice security guard opened the front door as I left; the weapons on his belt confirmed my fear that fights really do break out in libraries.  But when I thanked him for keeping everybody - including the people on the second floor - safe, I stopped worrying.

My original attitude was intact.

I gave him my friendliest smile, intent on bolstering his precious supply of Be Nice, or Else.

That stuff goes so fast when you're dealing with strangers.

(Ever wonder why anybody even cares whether a pound of feathers or a pound of lead would hit the ground first?  Not me!  I took a Physics class and will explain the whole deal next Friday.)