In Training.

I wasn't very nice yesterday. Usually, I consider myself a pretty alright person when it comes to being polite and considerate, but yesterday's a different story. I was rude. I was a bad student. A student who mutters unpleasantness about every task and roles her eyes and doodles incessantly and stands up to leave the moment it seems possible to do so. And now, of course, me being me, I feel a little guilty about it. One thing I've always wondered about is breaking points. In myself and others. Just how many insults can a person take before they strike back? For some it may be 1, for others it may be 90. How many punches can one withstand before they either run or retaliate? And just how many asinine and pointless activities can I, or anyone, be asked to do before we start flinging chairs across the room and overturning tables? I still don't know, but came the closest I ever have to finding out yesterday. Looking around at my colleagues faces, some calm and resigned, others confused and frustrated, and feeling the red tinge of anger rising in my own, I realized my fuse may be shorter than I'd like it to be. Imagining the glass walls of the cell surrounding us shattering or the heaters warming the room catching fire or the sea swelling up and engulfing the city or an earthquake tearing a whole in the ground and swallowing the building, just to escape inanity, are thoughts better left unthunk. At times like that, I wish I could escape myself and enter the minds of the resigned and think the thoughts that look pleasant and calm on their faces, instead of my own thoughts that probably leave me looking ugly and ready to fling chairs.