Spray Paint Can

The beautiful thing about anger is how powerful it makes you feel.  Unfortunately that power just begs to be used, and in my experience that tends to lead to regret.  Take the time I was 17 years old, and working at my father's used car lot.  My job that day was to clean and prep a beautiful silver truck so that it could go on the lot to be sold.  I had finished washing the truck, and the towels were draped around the stall to dry.  We had some special black spray paint for cars that shined up the undercarriage near the wheels.  The old can ran out, and I grabbed a new one out of the back.  I stood in my little stall of the car shop and examined the lid.

Now there's a little notch where you can pop the lid off with a screwdriver, but that's not the macho way of doing it.  I wrestled it with my bare hands, but darned if that lid refused to budge!  I'll show it.  I banged the lid on the edge of the tool bench.  Banged again.  That was one tough lid!  But I was tougher.  I wound up, and banged the lid as hard as I could.   Now it was a man thing.  This lid was calling me a wuss, and no one gets away with that.  The screwdriver was hanging on the wall with the other tools, and as I grabbed the sharp instrument I realized popping the lid was too good for this defiant insubordinate lid.  Full of anger and power I decided to poke the screwdriver through lid and fling the stubborn thing away Rambo style.

I missed the lid by a mere millimeter and punctured the can.






I remember a black monster jumping at my face and I tossed the can instinctively clenching my eyes shut.
FWSSSSH tink tink FWWwwwwsssssSSSSHHHHWWwwwwSSSHHHH ping bang bang
Now I kept my eyes closed in shock and despair as the rocket soared around my stall
SSsSSSSSHSsSsssssssSSSHSHH ping ping bang FWWWWwwwwsssssssss.

As the hissing missile fizzled to a stop I decided I would brave a peek.  Turns out car paint is fast drying and quite strong.  My eyes were sealed shut, and I had to pry the open with my fingers.  If there was any anger left in me the sight I saw sapped the last of it.  Swaths of black across all the white towels. Black smeared across the truck, on both sides.  Each tool on the wall speckled with black dots.  A mirror confirmed my suspicion, I had changed ethnicity.  As I stood there feeling all shades of stupid I realized there was one more lesson on anger I was about to learn.  There was no way to hide this from my Dad.

While my body started to stiffen I stumbled to the main office.  The paint had begun to sting my eyes, and I knew that was the least of my problems.  My Dad heard me coming as he wrote something in a report,
"Come in Scott, what's up?"
Where to start?
He glanced up for a second and then did a double take.  His eyes widened and all he could say was
"Oooooo my."
He jumped up and rushed me to the bathroom pulling a hose and setting the water to run on my eyes.  He ran to the car fix-it shop next door and got their tube of paint skin solvent.  He scrubbed the paint from around my eyes and face and found a clean towel for me to wash with.  He asked me a dozen times how my eyes were, where it hurt, and how I was doing.  Finally he sent me home to change and shower.

Now I have seen my father angry.  I highly doubt he didn't feel the emotion, but he understood something I needed to learn, control and timing.  Eventually I had to face the question: "What were you thinking?" but not when I stood in his office lacquered in black.  There was a painful cleaning to do, but that wasn't what my father said when my eyes were stinging.  There have been times when I would have said my dad wasn't exactly patient, but that day he showed me what a real man does when he is angry.  The righteous may be stirred up to anger (2 Nephi 28:20), but one of the things we must learn in life is to control our appetites and passions (Alma 38:12).  Losing my temper always leads to a bad story.  My father's patience not only helped me when I needed it most, it taught me a lesson I have never forgotten.