I cooled my heels for more than an hour waiting for a "blood draw." Why so long? There was no long line of people ahead of me. Was it simply that the department was understaffed? That they all went out for ice cream? Or were the blood-collectors, the vampires, gossiping and lazing about behind the curtain?
I was miffed.
But it wasn't long before I transitioned from passive miff to active glare. Now, "glaring" is a powerful, if ineffective, way to deal with such inconveniences. I think that my powerglare was beginning to get the attention of the poor schlub sitting at the desk pretending to ignore me.
But let me confess that there's a danger inherent in the glare, because if your lower lip quivers ever so slightly, you're no longer glaring, you're pouting. Of course I didn't want to be seen as a pouter. So I concentrated all my energy into my glare. I think I had it under control, but after a while, without making a conscious decision to do so, I escalated from glaring to seething.
The seethe is more difficult to express than the glare. You can glare with just your eyes, but you have to put your whole body into the seethe. For proper seething, you have to cross your arms and hunch over. And once you're in that posture, you can then begin to move from seething to simmering. But you must be careful not to be perceived as sulking.
And then on to fuming. Fuming is very like seething and simmering — the same hunched body posture — but accompanied with heavy breathing and an occasional, intermittent through-the-teeth hiss. You've got to make sure that your hiss is a true angry hiss and not a pathetic sniffle.
From fuming it was only a short step to boiling, which came at about the 55 minute mark.
Good thing my name was called on the hour, because I was just about to blow my top.
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