The Unlikely Rager

Would you expect someone filled with rage to be a hugger?

Two women share a hug.

I noticed his shirt first. Some kind of parody of Lucy from Peanuts at her lemonade stand, offering to buy souls for five cents. He was a big guy. Over six feet. Filled out. If he stood in front of her, she'd have been completely invisible. 

And he wasn't interested in our rage room.

I've seen that a lot. Guys making decisions for their whole family. Heads bowing in acquiescence to the Alpha but eyes looking back with mixtures of curiosity and longing. I'm not out to wreck anyone's home with my rage room, but I feel strongly that, even statistically, there will be a reckoning. While those Alphas blame me for providing my wanton offerings, the blame is in their too-tight fists. I'm not going anywhere. 

But I digress.

Because this time, this woman was not having any of her man's nonsense.

"A rage room? Where you break shit? Fuck! Oh, I'm sorry!" She pulled the neck of her shirt up over her mouth to cover the vulgar utterance she'd uttered.

"Fuck that," I replied, as I often do when people apologize for swearing in my presence.

She grinned.

"But we did this at the Ren Faire," the guy was saying.

"Ren Faire is only once a year," she countered. "This is all the time."

"And we'll even come to you," I said, breaking into my sales pitch for the mobile unit. I walked her through some of the activities and showed her the demos we had set up at the Farmer's Market that day.

"You're really on to something," she told me.

"Well," I admitted. "The Japanese were on to something about a decade ago. And there are rage rooms in Hanover and other places not too far away. But they don't seem to allow walk-ins and we're just hoping to..." I just stopped talking and let her take in the flyer, the pricing list, the demos.

"I'm definitely going to do this," she whispered it like it was a wish. "This is amazing." 

Then she asked if she could hug me.

Two women sitting in a workshop sharing a friendly hug.

I agreed and while we were hugging, I whispered, "Thank you for getting it." Because I do know, and know very well, what it means to be a woman and to have rage that is expected to stay suppressed. The week before, two young women in customer service and hospitality fields had voiced similar feelings. They expected fun, but felt catharsis. My rage room won't replace therapy, but people won't have to get a referral or wait for a year or hope insurance covers it, either. 

She clung to me like a kid with a scraped knee getting love from the grown-up who'd just put the bandage on. Or so I imagined. And after a long minute, we stepped back again. 

"Do you want to break something today?" I asked. "Right now?"

Her eyes grew wide. She bit her bottom lip and nodded. 

I selected for her the tile I'd designed that morning. Worry, Fear, Self-Doubt, Anxiety, Insecurity -- things I wanted to smash in my own life -- were written in colored relief on a 3x6 subway tile. 

Subway tile with words, concepts, and ideas we need to smash.

And I'm telling this story, so I say she had a tear in her eye as she took the tile from me and read the words we both wanted to destroy. Tile in hand, she walked over to the tarp where other broken tiles had already met their demise that day, laid down mine, and picked up the axe handle. 

All my doubts and worries didn't stand a chance.

Once she'd broken the tile into four or five fragments, she swept the larger pieces together with her hand and then drove the handle into every remnant until she was pounding sand. Then she hugged me again.

"I'll definitely be back," she said.

She went back to her guy and, as I saw it, took his hand. As they walked away, she was talking a mile a minute about this new activity they were going to be doing as regularly as their laundry.

And I know very well that I shouldn't judge any family that walks by, whether they reject me or give me five minutes of their time, based solely on that encounter. The guy was wearing a cool shirt. He took her to the Renn Faire. He didn't drag her away when she stopped to talk to me. 

But sometimes I'm a betting woman.

And I bet that woman found some wings she didn't know she had before.

And yes, she's exactly why I'm doing this.

The Rage Room - York is currently mobile and often found on weekends at Morning Sun Marketplace in Thomasville, PA. We hope to open a retail space in East York in September. It cannot come soon enough.