Frustrations/Revenge

Late one summer evening in Broken Bow, Nebraska, a weary truck driver pulled his rig into an all-night truck stop. The waitress had just served him when three tough looking, leather jacketed motorcyclists- of the Hell’s Angels type- decided to give him a hard time. Not only did they verbally abuse him, one grabbed the hamburger off his plate, another took a handful of his fries, and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it.

How do you think he responded? He calmly rose, picked up the check, walked to the front of the room, put the check and his money on the cash register, and went out the door. The waitress followed him to put the money in the till and stood watching out the door as the big truck drove away into the night.

When she returned, one of the bikers said to her, “Well, he’s not much of a man, is he?” She replied, “I don’t know about that, but he sure ain’t much of a truck driver. He just ran over three motorcycles on his way out of the parking lot.”

Many of us can understand how this truck driver feels. Sometimes even the slightest relationships can push us to the brink. When I look at the news reports of the damage left by Hurricane Katrina, I am amazed at all the devastation, but something is there as well: the fraying of raw nerve endings. As the period of catastrophe lengthens, tempers are getting shorter.