Here are two sure signs that you need a vacation:
当たり散らす (atarichirasu: to find fault with everybody; make oneself disagreeable)
to treat (unkindly) + verbal suffix indicating disorderWow, there’s a suffix for disorder! They’ve thought of everything!
八つ当たりする (yatsuatari suru: to snarl at the wrong person, to take it out on someone, unjustified burst of anger)
eight + to treat (unkindly)
OK, I have zero idea what “eight” has to do with this kind of outburst. But I certainly know about snarling at the wrong person, not to mention finding fault with everybody, as in 当たり散らす. This past week, I’ve kept unreasonable hours, trying to spend every waking minute on work (and trying to have a lot more waking minutes than sleeping minutes). I needed to clear out an inhuman amount of work before taking a vacation. At the same time, my husband went to Korea and Taiwan for a business trip.
Normally, both things could drive me around the bend. But strangely, I seemed to be fine. I kept telling myself, “Doing great! Doing fine! No problem!”
And yet the stress began to warp my mood. In the building where I rent an office, a woman down the hall has a persistent cough, and it’s the phlegmiest cough I’ve ever heard. With the advent of wintry weather, her coughs have increased in frequency so that I can practically time them: one round of coughing every two minutes. By “round,” I mean that there’s a two-part harmony to her coughs—the same tempo every time. Only, they don’t cause harmony in me.
You know how when you have a bad headache and then hear a staccato sound at even a moderate volume, that noise pierces your brain and ricochets against the inside of your skull? Her coughs do that to me. They fly down the hall and curve into my room, and then into my brain, as if traveling on some poison-tipped arrow. Whatever she has must not be contagious, but boy, does it spread in the most toxic of ways. I’m livid! I’m furious that she’s been coughing for three years. I’m incensed that it’s the ugliest cough I’ve ever heard. I’m outraged that no amount of background noise seems to drown out her coughs. And I’m distressed beyond belief that every time I manage to sink back into some state of concentration, there she goes again. Oh, and I’m also more than peeved that she’s working the same long hours I am. From early morning until well past sunset, that cough is the one human noise I hear more than any other. What a treat.
But I can’t tell her. What can I tell her? Can I tell her? What would I say? I think about it. I imagine it. And I can’t really imagine it, because all I envision is this: 八つ当たりする.
It’s not fair of me to lash out at her over a cough. It’s a trifling thing, even if it sounds like cannon fire in my head. Or is it a trifling matter? For all I know, the poor thing is dying of emphysema.
If so, could she do that more quietly? Maybe I should suggest that.
As I’m stressed about work and livid about this ca-cough-any, I take it out on my sweet dogs. Sweet, persistent, pesky, determined dogs. On these unreasonably, unseasonably frigid days we’ve been having, the dogs vie for the one shaft of sunlight streaming into my office. That would be great, except that given where we are in the year, that shaft happens to point directly to my desk chair. So first Ria shows up to sit in the coveted spot. I should be able to tolerate that, but how can I possibly think straight when there’s another body just an inch away from mine, at peril of being rolled over if my chair moves? How can I think straight when someone’s coughing and my software is driving me insane and I have more work than I know how to manage? I can’t, so I ask Ria to go sit elsewhere, and she obliges.
My other dog, Kanji, therefore sees that the glorious sunny spot has opened up, and he shows up, happy and expectant. He loves to press against my shin, and lately he’s decided that the best place for him is actually in my lap. So he sits at my side, looking up at me, waiting, waiting, hoping, begging, pleading.
I ask him nicely to go sit elsewhere, and he does. He comes back in two minutes, wondering if it’s worth another try. I tell him again, not as nicely.
Meanwhile, Ria hasn’t given up on the sun thing either, so she makes another appearance.
And so the cycle goes, first one dog, and then the other, and then there’s a cough from down the hall, and oh my god, have I ever needed a vacation this much?
Given my state of mind, the terms 当たり散らす and 八つ当たりする seem more wonderful right now than any other wonderful words I know.
