When Angry, Count Four; When Very Angry, Swear.

Years of English teachers have tried to hammer to my core that words have monetary values. Those three-letter words like sad and mad were supposedly "cheap" while synonyms like anger and fury were "rich." As I've grown older, I've begun to realize that word-length is not positively correlated with word-value. It's all about the semantics. Anger is mean-spirited. It makes enemies. It ignites war. It is arguably foolish and usually replaceable by some constructive action. Anger is authoritative discipline. Mad is much more valuable, though, because of the emotion that is attached to it. Mad is for a specific reason and directed at someone you truly care about.

When I moved to a new school in the sixth grade, the first friend I made quickly became one of my closest. And while I could dedicate an entire blog to the high points of our friendship, I'm going somewhere else with this: I still remember our first fight (that it occurred, not what sparked it). It was that same year, the sixth grade. She was walking fast so I wouldn't be able to catch up with her, but I wasn't letting my years of soccer running drills go to waste. I kept asking her why she was mad but she was giving me the silent treatment. But giving up wasn't an option. This friendship was, simply put, invaluable. I felt sick to my stomach. The only thought running through my head was, "I can't believe I did something to make her, of all people, get mad at me." Though I didn't see it then, that fight made our friendship exponentially stronger.

There are certain people in my life that I just cannot stand to have upset with me. Ideally, I wouldn't want anyone to be upset with me, but nobody's perfect, right?

Though it's a bit ironic, I personally believe the opposite to be true as well. We only get truly mad at those about whom we care the most. Sure we might curse at the biker who splashes us as he rides through a puddle or glare at the person who orders the last bagel. But these small frustrations are never long-lasting. They simply aren't worth it. (I never read "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff," but I surmise that it is loosely based on this idea.) But with our close friends and family, it's completely different. We don't think of them as people who would wrong us or upset us. We shouldn't think of them as people who would make us mad (meaning upset, not insane. This is probably debatable in some families.) So when things do go awry, we are caught off guard. We are hurt and we are mad at this person who we never expected to hurt us.

But in a twisted way, getting upset proves that you care. You want your loved ones to be the best that they can be, and when they falter, your response navigates them in the right direction. This is most certainly not to be confused with holding a grudge. Being mad is not forever. One has wronged. The other is hurt. But they meet somewhere in the middle.

I'd never admit this to my parents, but I never cared when they grounded me. It was so commercial. I spent more time thinking about how I could sneak in a television show or two than about the reason I was grounded in the first place. But the times that my mom gave me the silent treatment, I knew that I had upset her. And all I wanted to do was fix things. To prove to her that I was worthy enough to speak to.

Winston Churchill once said, "A man is about as big as the things that make him angry." Although he was probably alluding to the foolishness of being angered by little annoyances, I am going to offer an alternate explanation. A situation involving someone you deeply care about is big. And if this big thing is making you mad, you must be a pretty big man. And now, to disagree with another great, it's never too late to apologize.