Putting damper on anger

> Emotional issues and conditions are now dealt with in many artful, far-out ways

SOMEONE showed me a somewhat random video of people putting cucumbers near cats, and the horrified cats leaping away in sheer terror, sometimes, out of windows.

Watching it, I re-lived my teenage attempts at dating, and how the girls used to flee in horror.

I was further thrown back to my childhood days by an Indian newspaper report about police officers using catapults to fire balls of chilli powder as a crowd control technique.

Well, I did the exact same thing as a kid and my teacher denounced me as a troublesome brat who would achieve nothing in life.

Okay, so her prediction was accurate, but I should still get royalties, right?

Yet, it is only now, finally, that society is seeing childhood episodes as things to take seriously.

Following the success of The Anger Room in Texas, several countries are now offering ‘tantrum spaces’ for adults to scream and shout and smash up stuff.

They quote psychologists saying that destroying property is “a vital outlet for emotional release, blah blah blah”.

Well, thank you very much world for realising this, decades after I spent my childhood being punished.

At last, modern children now have the terminology to argue their case.

Teacher: “You just burned down the school.”

Kid: “Destruction is a vital outlet for emotional release, blah blah blah.”

Teacher: “Good point. Here, have this gold merit star.”

Readers may have seen the US news item about an incident in Colorado when police used pepper-spray to subdue an out-of-control eightyear-old.

Some people said they should have just reasoned with him, but that only makes sense to people who’ve never had to deal with eight-year-olds.

Pepper-spray is the minimum force necessary.

A preferable option would be to approach the kid with a bomb disposal robot fitted with a speaker. “Put down the axe and we will send an adult in a hazmat suit to read Winnie-thePooh book to you.”

The use of such force might be because Asian boys grow up with the trickiest challenges these days.

In China, the folk tradition called Fu-Ji requires children to use a Chinese ouijaboard to summon a female evil spirit.

But Chinese law says males have to wait until they are at least 22 to get married.

So it’s fine for a boy to call up a demonic she-devil, but marrying an actual physical woman – “whoah, guys, this might be dangerous, let’s wait at least 10 more years”.

Not sure if that is bizarre or actually very smart. Whatever.

Now, excuse me while I go dig up my catapult. My kids are running amok and I need to do some crowd control.

Nury Vittachi is an Asiabased frequent traveller. Send ideas and comments to lifestyle. nury@thesundaily.com.