What have you said to someone while you were really mad that you will forever regret?

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When I was young, I had a job bagging groceries. We worked for tips. I worked hard to earn maybe $10–13 an hour. Most of my peers didn’t make that much. I didn’t care much for my peers and just stuck to making money.

Over the time I worked there I went from not caring for my peers to actively disliking them.

Eventually it happened. The way the job worked was, you had to give a small percentage of your earnings to one bagger who worked the express line. The express line was money. I never got picked for it, maybe once in the whole time I worked there.

I usually ponied up my cash without a fuss, but not that time. Out of unexamined frustration, anger, and just flat out ignorance, I got mad at the girl who asked me for “cart money” that day. I was really busy making my money and I couldn’t be bothered with her silly request. She kept asking and I got mad.

I threw the money at her. But not just the money she asked for. I threw all the money I had in my pocket. I didn’t have a lot of experience handling anger back then. She simply started picking up all my money.

Once I saw this I hounded her to give me my money back. I saw it in her hand and I forced it out into my hand. Now that I think back on it, it’s exactly what I would have done to my sister had we been in that situation. Worked fine then, didn’t that time.

The cops were called, I got booked for assault. I wound up doing 40 hours of community service. I did my community service and got a great deal of much-needed experience working with real adults with real jobs.

Being a military brat, later on I decided to join the military. When I went to take my tests I aced every one. I’m really smart. So I sign up for an intelligence job in the Air Force. I had to take the DLAB test, still the hardest test I’ve ever had to take. I didn’t ace it, but I scored high enough to get placed as an Airborne Crypo-linguist in the United States Air Force.

In boot camp, a few weeks in, they put me in front of this guy who started asking me pointed questions about whether I am fit for the job I signed up for. Linguists required a top-secret clearance.

He asked me if I’d ever gotten arrested. I was tired. I wasn’t socially aware. I didn’t realize in the moment that the whole reason was to fuck me with my answer. I told him about my indiscretion from 3 years ago. He didn’t care that the records should have gotten expunged because it happened on a military base. He had the power to change my life’s path and he exercised it without a moment’s regret.

I got reclassed into a technical career field, Electronic Warfare. I could not forgive the military for fucking me over like that. I resented every waking moment I was there. Never mind that EW was a much better career field for my temperament than linguist was. Did I mention that I would have had a $30,000 bonus as a linguist but only $6,000 as a EW tech?

Yep, I was mad. So mad I wanted out of the Air Force. You see, to get the linguist career field I had to sign up for a 6 year commitment. EW only required a four year commitment, but they wouldn’t reduce it. So I was looking at doing 6 years in an organization I loathed.

I wanted out of the United States Air Force, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I managed to do it. The details are too complicated for this answer but it took planning and guts. At one point my mom called me and told me that my step-dad, a high-ranking Marine, could have pulled strings and gotten me back into my original deal with the $30k and the linguist job. I refused. Principles clouded my judgment.

I thought it would only take me a few years to find my footing after I got out. Instead I got comfortable working for my estranged father, who I’d never really known before and is an electrician, and it took me close to ten years to finally start a web development career. Yes, 6 years after my Air Force commitment would have ended, I finally found satisfaction with my life and work. Twice my Air Force commitment.

All because I couldn’t swallow my pride. Not just once, but numerous times.

It’s all water under the bridge now, but my life would have been way way different if I could have understood how corrosive anger was. Getting out of the Air Force required developing a lot of inner qualities I’d read about in the books that got me through high school but never could actually work on or display before that moment. A lot of those qualities I admired, didn’t actually serve me all that well. That $30k that mattered so much to me, seems meaningless now in the face of my current six-figure salary.

I learned. I learned how to control my anger. I learned about emotional maturity. The hard way.

I hope in the next life it doesn’t have to be that hard of a lesson.