Chapter 1: Where In Hell Have You Been?

It happened a long time ago, not that I'm immune to similar glitches now. To set the scene, I should tell you that it was during an era when Betty, my wife, was reasonably reliable about her arrival time. I'd been off to a conference for four days and I'd said I'd be back at about five P. M. that Friday. True to my word, before I'd gotten my bag to the bedroom, the living room clock struck five times.

Some nice moments had occurred at the conference, and I had some greetings to relay to Betty, so I hummed to myself as I put my dirty clothes in the laundry basket, changed my slacks and hung up my jacket. My feelings of warmth and affection rose as I looked at Betty's picture on the dresser, and my sense of anticipation heightened when I glanced up from perusing the clutch of newpapers in a kitchen chair and noted that it was almost five-thirty. "She'll be here right away," I thought.

I puttered around with this thing and that, maybe I pulled out something to warm for dinner, I can't recall now, but the clock inched its way toward six. An overlay of annoyance entered my feelings. "Why isn't she here -- she knows I ought to be home by now?" I said to myself. I opened the pages of a news magazine and caught up on the news. Perhaps at some point the thought crossed my mind, "Well, since she's late, and this article is so intriguing, I'd just as soon finish it." If that happened I felt all right inside myself -- for that moment at least.

Six. Six fifteen. Six thirty. The minutes dragged by. "What a nuisance." Still, I found things to do. There are always things to do. But I stayed alert for the car on the drive. Nothing. Seven o'clock. Anger rose inside me. "Why is she doing this to me?" And fear. "What could have happened to her?" But if fear was my only feeling I should have begun telephoning the hospitals or checking with the police concerning accidents. It wasn't my only feeling. Underneath it all I assumed that Betty was late because she chose to do something that made her late.

About seven twenty-five I heard the car turn in the driveway. By the time I got to our front hall I could see the last three feet of Betty's car as it disappeared from view into the garage.

In the years since I've realized that I had all the feelings available to me that I had felt over the minutes and hours that had passed. Love, affection, anticipation, excitement, concern, OKness, annoyance, anger, fear -- she was home, but in what condition I couldn't yet know -- and RELIEF. That last, I think, should have been my dominant feeling. After all, she was home at last.

But how did I spell relief? A-N-G-E-R.

I can imagine myself now, standing at the window by our front door, maybe tapping my foot and scowling. I'm sure I took in Betty's condition. Clearly she hadn't been attacked by a mad dog or rapist. She was smiling. Smiling! The nerve.

Her smile entitled me to react however I wanted to react. "Where in hell have you been? I told you I was going to be here at five and now it's almost seven-thirty!" I said, angrily. Life is a multiple choice exam, and there are almost always more alternatives than the typical professor's cluster of four or five. I could have checked-off one of the other feelings I had had in those two and a half hours and acted upon it. But no, I knew that society would back me up, I felt righteous indignation, and I was entitled to be indignant -- especially when I learned that Betty had spent much of that time at a fabric store. The way I saw it, she had chosen fabric over me.

Well, we got past that moment somehow, and late in the evening, in a kind and gentle voice, Betty said to me, "Dick, you've been working on your Choice Awareness ideas, and I know you've told me that people may think they only have one feeling at a time, but you believe we can make choices sometimes about our feelings. I wonder if it would have been possible for you to have chosen to react to me with some feeling other than anger when I came home late."

CLICK.

The trouble with sharing a great idea with someone is that she or he may be able to use it against us. Kidding aside, Betty was right. I could have reacted on the basis of any of my feelings.

I'm tuned in better now to my options. I can even feel for the person who gets the where-in-hell-have-you-been response. What a motivator for turning on his or her heels and seeking some more comforting environment -- or person! Is that what we want to accomplish when we act on our anger? I don't think so. It wasn't what I wanted, anyway -- at least not at any deep level.

I've learned now and then to offer a mixed-feeling statement when Betty is late according to my view, which for a long while was far too often -- because she became even more of a dedicated professional than she was then. But sometimes, when I choose my words a bit more carefully, I say, "I was worried about you. I wish you'd called." And now and then after I think the caring message has penetrated, I still add, "Where in hell have you been," or something to that effect.

After all, I'm still human.