The Lost Club Sandwich. Anger Uncensored. Husband Hits Hound. Hold on Tight During the Ride.

The Lost Club Sandwich
It’s 7:06 PM. I’ve been sitting at Newark Airport for six hours, waiting for my 10:00 PM flight to Berlin. I’ve never been this early for a flight, and after three hours of “Sex and the City,” I need something new to occupy my mind.
I take out my earbuds, lean back in my sleek but unforgiving leather chair, and settle into my half-lotus pose — a position I find oddly comfortable, though it draws more than a few puzzled looks. I observe the symphony of airport life around me:
Six seats away, an Instagram influencer with camo makeup, fuzzy Uggs, and black leggings flips her glossy mane with a practiced Lady Di tilt. A group of rabbis in black suits sways in gentle unison, while a stiff businessman has been locked in what appears to be an endless and intense very important phone call.
Pow! A sharp sound jolts me.
Behind me, a man slams his weekender bag onto the leather chair. The entire row shudders, including my perch. He’s tall, impeccably dressed in a checked vest and slacks, wearing a kippah and wire-rimmed glasses. After plopping down heavily, he unzips his bag and starts rummaging with fervor.
Shirts, trousers, and a precariously perched towel stack up like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, threatening to topple at any moment. “I told you to put the club sandwich in the fridge!” he snaps. His wife mumbles something, and he counters: “If it had been in the fridge, I would’ve packed it!”
The Whole World is Angry. Except Me.
The debate over the forgotten club sandwich escalates, lasting a solid ten minutes. I glance nervously at the leaning tower and wonder if I should intervene, move seats, or let out a loud sigh to make my disapproval known. I click my tongue. In my mind.
As the argument rages on, I marvel at how angry people seem to get over trivial things. A sandwich! Why make a mountain out of a molehill — or a club sandwich?
“That would never happen to me,” I think smugly. Why shout at someone over something so insignificant?
Oh Wait, Me Too.
That thought stays with me throughout my turbulent, sleepless flight. By the time I’m back in Berlin, exhausted from a day-long journey, I find myself squeezed into a packed Ringbahn car. Luggage in hand, I’m standing near the door, surrounded by the usual commuter chaos.
Two giggling teenage girls in camo makeup stand right in front of me, wobbling and joking instead of holding onto the handrails.
“You have to hold on,” one says to the other. The other holds on to her. I can already see the other one wobbling dangerously, reminding me of the Leaning Tower. She stumbles around but regains her balance. “You have to really HOLD ON, not to ME!” the one says again, more vehemently, to the other, but to no avail.
The train lurches forward, and with a resounding thud, she falls on me, pinning me against the glass. My foot throbs where she stomped on it.
Before I can stop myself, I snap: “YOU HAVE TO HOLD ON!” My voice is sharp, angry.
She immediately grabs the rail, and I’m left with a lingering question: Where did that anger come from? Was it really about her? Or was it the culmination of sleepless hours and travel frustrations?
Is it ok to shout?
In that moment, I wonder where all this anger inside me actually came from. Is it sometimes necessary to use vehemence in our tone to get a message across? I think to myself, that can't really be the right way. I was overtired, just 10 minutes away from home after a journey that had lasted almost an entire day. Are those valid reasons to snap at someone? It still doesn’t sound convincing to me. Does the man with the kippah get to scold his wife just to make his point? Do we sometimes need to raise our voices to trigger a learning process in others? To make it clear that something is truly serious and needs to change in the future? Could that be?
Anger — Wait What— A Power Struggle?
Days later, I’m reading this book on my couch when a passage stops me cold: “Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you.” Huh? So it’s about submission? “Even when you feel genuinely angry, consider that the other person is challenging you to a power struggle.” Oh, so it’s a battle for dominance?
Anger isn’t just frustration — it’s a battle for control. A fight to assert dominance.
The authors go on to explain that even when one person emerges as the winner and the other as the loser in this power struggle, the conflict isn’t truly over. “Having lost the dispute, he rushes to the next stage (…). It’s the revenge stage. Though he has withdrawn for the time being, he will be scheming some revenge in another place and another form, and will reappear with an act of retaliation.”
It was Adler — yes, the guy known for the inferiority complex — who pieced all of this together.
Husband hits dog hits cat hits wife hits husband
A lightbulb moment. Suddenly, it all makes sense. It’s the classic tale of the man who kicks his dog, who then bites the cat, who then scratches the man’s wife, who then yells at her husband, who then, in turn, kicks the dog again… and so the cycle repeats itself endlessly.
How often do we find ourselves caught in this vicious anger cycle without even realizing it?
I wonder how much pent-up frustration the forgotten sandwich must represent for the kippah-wearing man. How many times has he felt like the loser in a conflict with his wife (or anyone else — it doesn’t really matter) before deciding to assert himself in a loud and dramatic power struggle at Newark Airport, surrounded by countless passengers?
When we snap at someone, have we all, in fact, already lost a power struggle elsewhere? Are we trying to restore our sense of superiority in another arena, one where we feel we might finally win?
It seems very likely. The only way to break the cycle is as clear as it is challenging: “To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in.” Interesting. And challenging. I think I need to dive deeper into this idea…
The Jogging-Pants Dominator
And then it hits me: the jogging-pants guy on my flight. The one who snapped at me when I stood up to try to make my tight connection. The moment when I didn’t have a comeback and walked away as the clear loser in the exchange. The moment when I lost my power struggle over precious minutes of running time at Zurich Airport. And his girlfriend? I had to give way to her too as she cut in line, adding salt to my wounds.
So the stumbling subway girls? Clearly, they were my metaphorical “dogs,” conveniently present at just the right time and place to receive my lovingly cold-served revenge.
Well, great. Busted. Next time, let’s try to handle this differently, shall we?
Interested in the book I was reading? Check it out here: https://amzn.to/3VuUGYe (English copy) https://amzn.to/3OQQIoI (German copy)
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