While at the outdoor learning center we occasionally had very large, multi day school groups that required a large group of instructors to coordinate. For one of these events,  I was either the designated leader, or a defacto leader due to my seniority. I don’t remember if we were having a specific problem, or a more general meeting in our instructor house, but as groups of a dozen or so often do, we began to descend into chaos and crosstalk, and voices were getting louder. Nothing crazy, but at that point in a meeting where the average person starts to know the actual issue won’t get solved, fear nothing will get solved, and want to just get the hell out of there. Since I was “in charge” simply leaving wasn’t an option, so that left me feeling frustrated. 

We were equal parts teachers and maintenance workers, and I had a hammer nearby the couch I was sitting on. I grabbed the hammer and banged on the concrete floor loudy. Like a gavel. Everyone got quiet. I don’t know what we talked about to finish the meeting, because that’s not the point of the story. 

After the meeting, one of the instructors, Mick, who hadn’t been there very long, asked to talk with me in private. He was tense, literally, with visible muscle tension in his arms and face. He told me that my banging the hammer had been an escalation of tension and violence, and that it really upset him. He challenged me to think about how I would feel if someone else had done that, and how I would have dealt with someone further escalating the mood. I could see that this wasn’t a mere hypothetical, and that he was having difficulty controlling the emotions I had failed to hold in.

I would like to think I said something gracious and contrite at the time, but I have no memory of my response. Apparently I wasn’t a complete ass at the moment, because we didn’t come to blows. I do know that it was an incredibly meaningful intervention. I’m not a very alpha guy, so it’s not like I wave my anger around. But I am a white cisgender man, which means I get to justify my occasional emotional outbursts as the rightful reaction to the situation, in ways many others do not. I took it as an unquestionable right, until the moment he took me aside. Mick was certainly the first peer who stepped forward like that. It took real courage. 

FWIW, this particular story is “inspired” by a couple Twitter stories today of Science Fiction authors being rightly called out for ongoing behavior in their personal and professional lives, and how blind some of them seem to be to their own culpability, even after doing their public apologies. Recently I told a friend that one danger of writing myself as the center of every story is writing myself as the hero as well. I know I’m mostly a good guy, but to anyone I haven’t been good to, I’m a bad guy. That’s fair. I’ll own that.

 For those who’ve asked, I’m still not really sure exactly what I’m doing with these stories. I’m having a lot of fun writing. Many of you have been incredibly generous with your compliments. Thanks for reading, even to the less goofy ones.