I had to stop and think on this one, especially since I'm not really an eruption of rage kind of guy, and certainly wasn't an eruption kind of kid. I'm just not all that confrontational, even when I want to be. The first thing that comes to mind is this time that my mom took me and a couple of my friends to see a Rockets game at the arena formerly known as the Summit (apparently now it's a church?! Double you tee eff?!). This was around 7th or 8th grade. I don't remember who the hell they were playing or who won, but what I do remember about that night was that I was there with my mom and my friends Matt and Robbie. There was some obnoxious guy sitting in the row behind us who kept yelling all these pointless insults at the ref. You know, the guy who thinks that the price of his ticket included the right to be a total asshole? So somewhere near the end of the first half, I pulled together all my courage, turned my little ass around in my seat and told the guy to shut up. I literally said "shut up" to a grown person. Of course, I was totally banking on the fact that I was a little kid and that my mom was there to protect me, but still. I don't know if the guy actually shut up or not because come the second half of the game, he wasn't sitting behind us anymore, but damn if I didn't feel the badassest little junior high kid on the planet that night.
CAPRICORN (December 22 - January 19)
I was nine years old when I first risked my ass to fight for the rights of others. It was a winter morning in Ohio. Ten of us kids were waiting on a corner for the school bus to pick us up. A fifth-grader named Jerry Demasko was doing his usual shtick: insulting and belittling the girls. When he sneeringly informed little Debbie Runello that she would always be ugly, I snapped. I tackled him, sat on him, and drove his face into the freshly fallen snow. "Promise you'll stop being a mean bastard every minute of your life!" I demanded. He resisted at first, but when my inflamed strength kept him pinned, he broke. Your assignment, Capricorn, is to recall the first time you felt an eruption of pure compassionate rage in the face of injustice. Once you've done that, spend the next ten days cultivating and expressing that beautiful emotion.
Of course, it's not as if Matt and Robbie and I were perfect little angels that night. I have vivid memories of us throwing various single serving condiment packages on the ground inside the Summit and jumping on them to see how far we could get them to spray. Amazing the shit you get away with as a kid.
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