I slammed down the phone. My earlobes turned crimson and my forehead quivered. I muttered words I usually saved for special occasions. Someone had messed with Dave, questioning his “professionalism.” I showed up, didn’t I? I’d have cursed him with a pox on his family, but they had already suffered enough.

My anger always caught people by surprise because it struck with such fierce uncertainty. After all, wasn’t I Dave, lover of children and creatures with wet noses? Yes, but that was different. Kids and pets are God’s innocents. An adult jerk by another other name is still the same. I vowed to get the last word, which you are now reading.

Let’s face it; a good fight is an adrenaline rush, amateur boxing without the blood. I get so pumped up I could paint a house with a toothbrush. And there’s nothing like reliving those golden moments when you care enough to send the very best.

It’s easy to let such a funk take the driver’s seat. You could vent at home. Families love that stuff around the dinner table. Describe your face-off with evil this way: “I told him, and then he said this, and then I told him again, and then he said that, and then I told him to shove it.” “I’m so proud of you, hon,” your spouse will tell you as she passes the potatoes. To who else but your loved ones can you rewrite history and always emerge the winner? If only life were that easy.

Life is too short for short-fuses, so on this cranky-pants day, I redirected my thoughts to things far more important. Why be a pill, I thought, when someone somewhere has things so much worse than we do? How do I know? Oh, just a hunch. Not many have it better. Still, it doesn’t hurt to remind one’s self.

As I nursed my anger, Steve, an old friend and former student passed my door. When I had last talked with him he was on dialysis, life-saving treatment for failed kidneys. He had waited years for a donor. Though his health had declined, his spirits remained remarkably high, the only man I knew who could laugh at life on a transplant list. Now, he was one year into life on a new kidney, color back in his cheeks, but the smile as broad as ever. Get the point?

Then, a young woman called, a sweet girl whose eyes tear-up when I talk about poor kids around the world. She had dreamed of being a missionary. Her mother had built the Web site for my Cleats for Kids program. Now, their family wants me to be in the Fortuna Rodeo Parade. They’re building a float for me, a giant cleat, signifying the baseball gear I send to the poor kids of the Dominican Republic. With a little Latin music and a lot of luck, we’ll be thanking North Coast people for their help making it happen.

The young woman said she would do some driving herself were it not for a bad experience on her driving test four months ago. She’d hit a pregnant woman and knocked her down. “Was she okay?” I wanted to know.

“Fine. And so was the baby.”

“Baby?” I asked.

“She went into labor.”

“I wonder what they named the baby,” I ventured.

“I think they named him Lucky.”

I caught myself smiling again.

At Pierson’s Building Supply, I asked for particle board to build my float. It wouldn’t fit in my car, something I would have known if I had ever done any carpentry. My brother had always said to leave manual labor to the experts. And so I had. In the days of the covered wagon, I’d have been the one who read to the horses.

I’d have left Pierson’s empty-handed (remember, labor is for experts) if it hadn’t been for Mason, the young man who knew his lumber, and also knew a rube when he saw one. He offered to drop off the lumber on the way home, taking no money. “Do you like baseball?” I asked, telling Mason that in his own way, he was helping poor kids in another land. Baseball’s miracle had struck again.

So has the miracle of negativity. Every time I face a twit, I turn my attention to a good deed. Argue with a schmuck? Find a glove for a poor Dominican kid. See how it works? So, paradoxically, all the jerks I’ve known have made this a better world.

It’s easy to be flummoxed by the negativity of the moment. Some can make it last a lifetime. Or, you can fix your eyes on something or someone good. Breathe deep, and give your day a second chance.

Dave Silverbrand is a local television personality and teaches journalism at the College of the Redwoods.