Secret #17 - Temper, Temper

OK... Another closet moment... Avert your eyes. Look cautiously away.

I can throw a temper tantrum with the best of them! This has connection to my Queen of Everything secret and my Grudgy Greta secret, but is just a bit different from both of those rather embarrassing secrets.

My Great Grandmother Schubarth was a red head from waaaay back and she also was cursed with a rather nasty temper. My Grandma told a story of how Great Gramma hated gossip. She would often find herself talking over the fence with one of the small town's gossips and get her panties all bunched up. One particular afternoon she was talking with a known gossip that often irritated her, but she wasn't one to ignore someone who said hello. The Gossip stepped over Gramma's boundaries and began speaking of someone Gramma happened to know and admire. Gramma stopped the conversation and told the Gossip she should take back her words because she didn't know what she was talking about and the person was a friend of Gramma's. The Gossip refused. Gramma insisted. Gossip, very unwisely, refused again. Gramma explained if Gossip didn't take back the slurs, she would be forced to defend her friend's honor by kicking Gossip's arse right there on the front lawn. Gossip, rather taken aback by such coarse language, said, "Now Alice! You wouldn't hit a woman with glasses on!" (Gossip thought this would deter my German Gramma... Gossip would be wrong!) Gramma conceded that she would indeed not hit a woman with glasses on. She then, very gently, removed the glasses from the Gossip's face, placed them on the fence rail they were talking over, opened the gate and proceeded to kick that poor woman's' hiney all over the yard! She tore out tufts of Gossip's hair and sent her screaming down the street without her glasses. They were still on the rail.

My great grandfather was the unfortunate soul who broke up the row and insisted that my Gramma apologize for losing her temper. He sent her down the street with the glasses to return them and say she was sorry. While she was gone, he gathered up the tufts of hair from Gossip and placed them in a little tobacco bag he kept in his shirt pocket. Whenever Gramma would start to get fired up, Grampa would shake that little tobacco bag at her and smile, "Temper, temper, Alice!" She was so humiliated at losing her composure it usually worked.

I'm not sure how I would react to that... I might make Hubby eat the little sack if provoked at the wrong time. I cannot say that I have that extreme of a butt-kicking kind of temper, although I have done a version of it in my past. I have been known to throw things, slam things, say irrevocably nasty things, regrettable things... I have backed into cars, broken things, thrown my shoes and done all sorts of yelling.

Ugly, really. Closet stuff. "Temper, temper, Stacey!" These secrets are going to kill me...