In a heartbeat.

There was a girl I used to know. She had the inextinguishable fire in her eyes and she grabbed life by the balls. Of the few times I met her, she was telling the story of her divorce, as she tried hard to keep the smoke of her cigarette away from her 4 year old daughter. She shopped for groceries after a long day at work, carried at least four big bags of miscellaneous items nobody really needed, her handbag, and a bottle of wine, and finally climbed the four floors of her building till she got to her apartment’s door. Breathless as she was, she chose not to put everything on the floor and get out the keys from her handbag… as not to dissipate her remaining energy on dos and re-dos, but rather to ring the bell instead and just fling inside to the kitchen. Once… twice… three and maybe four times. Her husband, who was watching TV inside, opened the door and shouted outrageously at her for ringing the bell. Ungrateful as he was, he found a bottle of good red wine being shattered into pieces over his head. Their marital relationship didn’t really pick up since then.

Unlike everyone on our table, her reaction seemed completely natural to me, the normal consequence to impatience, intolerance, non-cooperation and non-controllable lust for putting the blame. But everyone thought that wasn’t the right thing to do, probably even my mom… for she never did it.