Most are fine.

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Some are bona fide jerks with a strong streak of high-school bully.

The same pattern holds true in the larger world, I suppose. The difference is that as a reporter, you have a pretty clear path to striking back: You can write about what a jerk so-and-so was.

That’s exactly what sports writer Jeff Pearlman did in 2008 with Will Clark, a former Major League Baseball player. But hearing him talk about how he now views that story shows that acting on a grudge usually leads to regret.

📙 Throw the book at her

Amy Zanelli, a district court judge in Pennsylvania, kept a literal book of grudges in her office.

This has become part of a professional problem for her, as she has been charged with violating the state’s rules of conduct for district judges.

According to the charging documents, Judge Zanelli “possessed what she termed a ‘Book of Grudges’ in her office, which had the appearance of an ancient leatherbound tome with papyrus pages.”

First of all, shout-out to whoever wrote this document because “leatherbound tome with papyrus pages” is flat-out lyrical.

Now, I must confess that I possess a 5-by-7 notebook that has “PETTY VENDETTAS” printed in shiny gold on the cover. However, I’m not a district court judge.

Justice is supposed to be blind, right? Not seething with anger.

The judge had allegedly made some entries in the book, including referring to one local attorney as “just a dick.”

Other issues spelled out in the charging papers included a calendar with sexually explicit jokes, her use of profanity and unauthorized absences. There was also an instance in which Judge Zanelli ordered a defendant, who was representing himself, out of the courtroom during testimony. In fact, she moved his chair into the hallway, told him to sit, and then denied him the chance to cross-examine the witness.

There has been no resolution to the charges, and Zanelli continues to sit as a judge in the Bethlehem area.

In 2008, he did something that I had always (quietly) dreamed about doing.

He wrote a story in which he absolutely let loose on someone who had treated him poorly:

Will Clark is a former major-league baseball player, a smooth-swinging first baseman who began his career in San Francisco before moving on to Texas. Pearlman found Clark particularly difficult. The story he wrote for Deadspin spelled out why.

Over the past 20 years, I have felt a fairly deep-rooted desire to write something similar about my stepfather.

To enumerate each and every way I felt he had wronged my family in general and my mother in particular. To let the world know just what a hypocritical jerk I felt he was.

Now, obviously, the stakes for my vendetta were more personal, but my motivation would have been the same: score settling. Fighting back. Standing up for yourself.

The way that Pearlman feels about that article now, however, makes this a bit of a cautionary tale, though.

Getting payback seldom turns out to be as satisfying as we think.

First, I want to link to the video that Pearlman made about this particular story. I do that for two reasons:

1. It’s a primary source for this post.

2. Pearlman himself is a fantastic storyteller, and his attempts to imitate Clark’s voice are — in and of themselves — worth the time it takes to listen.

OK. Now that I’ve tried to be ethical, let’s get to the story.

🥩 Beef background

August 26, 1997 – Pearlman was 25 years old and in his second year covering baseball at Sports Illustrated. He was assigned to write a story on the Texas Rangers, whose roster included Clark. Clark was recovering from a broken foot, and as reporters stood around Clark, asking questions about his recovery, Pearlman threw one in.

“Does it hurt?”

Clark paused, looked at Pearlman’s press credential to determine his name, and then responded: “Jeff, I broke my effing foot!”

Only he did not say effing.

“It was mortifying, and it was horrible,” Pearlman said in a recent podcast episode talking about his history with Clark. “And Will Clark just kind of moved on and snickered at me, and I shuffled off. And that was the beginning of my very, very strong disliking for Will Clark.”

Spring training 2000 – Pearlman saw Clark in spring training. By this time, Clark was playing for the Orioles, and after confirming Pearlman’s identity, Clark asked if he had written a specific story on John Rocker.

If you’re a sports fan, you probably know what story I’m talking about. If you’re not a sports fan, John Rocker was a tightly wired relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, whom Pearlman had profiled for Sports Illustrated.

In researching the profile, Pearlman spent time with Rocker in Georgia, where he made racist and homophobic statements. Pearlman (accurately) reported what Rocker said, which led to a great deal of condemnation and what turned out to be a 14-game suspension from the league.

Clark took issue not with what Rocker said, but with the fact that Pearlman reported it.

“Jeff (flipping) Pearlman,” Clark said, mispronouncing the word flipping. “Now, why the (heck) would anyone in here want to talk to you?”

2006 – Pearlman was in Arizona doing research for the book he would write on Barry Bonds (which is exceptional by the way).

Clark had retired by this point but was still working for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Pearlman asked if Clark would be willing to answer questions about Bonds.

Clark agreed to talk to Pearlman.

When Pearlman began to ask questions, Clark provided only one-word answers. Pearlman eventually asked why Clark was being non-responsive.

Clark’s response: “I would never talk to you. Look at what you did to Rocker. You think I forgot that? You think you could walk in here and talk to me?”

This time, Pearlman pushed back in what he now calls one of his favorite moments from his sports-writing career.

“I actually said something like Will Clark (would). ‘You know what, I don’t (effing) need this. I don’t have to talk to you.’ And I walked off.”

At the time, Pearlman found this very satisfying.

“You have these moments as a writer, now and then,” he said, “when you feel like Joe Frazier beating someone up and you feel pretty good. And in that moment, I felt really good.”

The reckoning

In 2008, Pearlman wrote the piece that Deadspin published under the headline “Will Clark was a cackling douchebag.”

“Even though I didn’t write the headline, I loved the headline,” Pearlman said of the piece. “To me, Will Clark was a cackling douchebag. And (forget) Will Clark and (forget) you and go to hell and I’m glad I wrote this about you and you shouldn’t have treated me that way.”

This is very much how I imagined I would feel if I published a piece calling my stepfather a self-righteous orifice.

The long tail of regret

Earlier this year, Pearlman was criticized by former NBA player Matt Barnes, who hosts the popular podcast “All The Smoke.”

Barnes observed that Pearlman was seemingly always negative in his observations and reflections on sports and the athletes he covered.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Go (eff) yourself,’ “Pearlman said of the criticism. “But I thought about it. Like, I really thought about it, and he’s not without a point.

“And then I started thinking about Will Clark.”

More specifically, he began looking at other aspects of Clark’s life beyond their interactions, beyond the game of baseball.

Clark has a son, Trey, who was born in 1995.

Before turning 3, Trey was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and much of Clark’s post-baseball life has been devoted to his son, both in celebrating his accomplishments and spending time with him.

Clark and his wife have also spent years raising awareness about autism and working with organizations that support individuals with autism and their families.

“You see this other side to this guy you called a cackling douchebag,” Pearlman said. “And yeah, Will Clark was definitely a douchebag to me. He definitely was not nice. But people are complex, and people are layered, and people are nuanced, and I just think in hindsight, what Matt Barnes said actually resonated with me.”

“In hindsight, referring to Will Clark as a cackling douchebag in print or on screen was kind of a low moment for me,” Pearlman said. “And dogging him all these years is shameful on my part. And that here’s a guy who might have not been perfect … but sitting here in 2026, what I see in Will Clark is a really devoted dad of two and husband and a guy who wants to do right.”

This really resonated with me.

Pearlman had intensely negative feelings toward Clark, feelings that weren’t unjustified, by the way. But by taking a bigger picture view of the person whose words stung him, he was able to dilute the hostility he felt.

This is where the parallel with my stepfather becomes more strained.

His actions did lasting damage primarily to my mom, but also to me, my brother, and my sister.

The closest I can come to cutting him some slack is to acknowledge that he grew up in a chaotic home, which undoubtedly affected his ability to relate to others.

That doesn’t absolve him of responsibility. It certainly doesn’t explain why he’s never acknowledged let alone apologized for the pain he caused.

But people are complex.

Even damaged ones.

Maybe especially damaged ones.

And while I’m sure I would get some satisfaction from publishing a story whose sole purpose was to enumerate my stepfather’s misdeeds, I’m pretty sure that down the road I would feel some level of regret about that.

It certainly wouldn’t change anything that happened, nor would it make my stepfather any more likely to take responsibility for what he did.

I’m still writing about him, but my main goal isn’t to detail what he did, but to explore why I fixated on it for as long as I did, the effect that this grudge had on me, and what ultimately allowed me to let go.

How do I know it’s about me?

Well, my name is in the title.

It also includes an analysis of a few specific things I’ve written, my words displayed and occasionally highlighted in a split-screen format. There’s also a literal receipt. He shows proof of a $5 refund I provided three years ago for a subscription he’d purchased to my personal newsletter.

Watching the video was an unnerving experience. There are two points, specifically, where he cursed at me while speaking directly to the camera.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve spent entirely too much thinking about this. While doing so, I realized that this incident offered a different perspective on the topic I’ve been exploring here.

I’ve written an awful lot about the grudges I’ve held, the impact that’s had and the steps I’ve taken to let go.

In this case, it would appear there’s a grudge being held against me, and I’m faced with a decision of what – if anything – I should do about it.

⚠️ A disclaimer ⚠️

I’m going to link to the video here. Before I do, I want to be explicit: I do not want anyone reading this to comment on it or interact with my former co-worker in any way.

While his name isn’t on the YouTube account, his identity is not a secret. I’m not interested in a critique of his opinions, his presentation or his motivation. In fact, I’m explicitly asking you not share those.

I am writing about how I am working my way through this emotionally fraught situation, and while you’re free to critique my actions or my own approach, I do not want that scrutiny applied to him. For my part, I’m going to try my best not to be judgmental of my former co-worker.

OK. Here’s the video:

📖 The backstory

I joined 710 ESPN Seattle as a full-time radio host in spring 2013, leaving my job covering the Seahawks for The Seattle Times. I was paired with Brock Huard on a show that aired 9 to noon on weekdays. The guy who made the video above was the producer of that show, a role he’d held for two years before I started.

As a producer, he was responsible for arranging interviews and organizing the show, and while he wasn’t a host, he was free to interject on-air.

I worked with him on a daily basis for about a year. We were never part of the same show after that. His contract with the station was terminated in 2020. I left the station the following year.

I last spoke to him three years ago. I called because I had noticed he was arguing with another subscriber in the comment section of my personal newsletter. I thought a personal phone call was the most respectful way to try and establish boundaries. He said I was reprimanding him. We have not spoken since that day.

Two weeks ago, a former colleague of ours who is still at the station, alerted me to the video, and while something on YouTube isn’t exactly the most pressing issue in our world, it does strike me as something that is unique to this particular era of human history.

⚖️ Specific objections

In the video, he points to three specific things that I did:

1. He believes I characterized him as a villain in an essay I wrote about my worst day in radio. That essay was first published in December 2022 on my newsletter, The Dang Apostrophe. A later version was published in Seattle magazine. Here’s the text from the initial newsletter essay:

   

2. Several months after the essay was published on my newsletter, I noticed that there was an argument going on in the comments. I realized that my former co-worker was arguing with another subscriber. I called him on the phone. My plan was to respectfully ask that he not argue in the comments of my articles. He felt I was reprimanding him. The conversation did not go well. I asked him not to comment any more and refunded his subscription.

3. Last year, I was asked on Twitter if I thought this producer would have been a good fit on “Danny, Dave and Moore” which is the show I hosted on from 2014 through 2019. I responded: “Depends on what era of (the producer) we’re talking about. He became increasingly volatile.”

Those are the triggers he identified, but he was also pretty clear about what he found most bothersome:

“I don’t know if you’ve gone out of your way to trash everybody post-exit. Maybe. But the fact that you can’t find one fucking thing nice to say about me is fucking hurtful. Like what the hell is your problem? What did I do to you?”

This is the point in the newsletter where I could react to the issues he brought up.

And if I was writing this as a response to the video, this is where I would do that.

But I’m not writing a response to what he said.

I’m writing about what — if anything — I should do in response.

That requires me to balance what I’m feeling (i.e. what I want to do) with some real-world pragmatism about the potential results of the different approaches I could take.

🛋️ Welcome to my psychologist’s office

Initially, I felt a certain amount of disbelief not just at the content and style of the video, but the fact I was being singled out.

I was not involved in any way with his departure from the radio station. Not the events that led up to it. Not the events that followed.

While our last conversation had not gone well, I didn’t realize how much antagonism he felt toward me specifically until I saw the video.

I was mad at what he said, and a little bit scared. I certainly didn’t think I was attacking him in the essay I wrote nor in my Twitter comment, but even if I had been, his response struck me as disproportionate. He addressed me as an “unforgiving little prick” and rhetorically asked, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Finally, I didn’t think the way he characterized the situation was entirely accurate. At the very least, I have a significantly different perspective on what occurred.

Even as I’m writing this, I can feel the visceral pull to defend myself. To push back against what he said, and that is absolutely what I wanted to do.

It is the approach that I have taken in the past.

That’s why I know better than to act on this impulse. I’ve learned from experience that a response is more likely to escalate the issue than resolve it.

A response is also more likely to draw attention.

While an online spat between two former Seattle radio personalities isn’t exactly big news, it will probably attract some onlookers who will inject their own opinions about either the issue or the individuals involved.

That’s not the outcome I want.

So I should just ignore it, right?

That’s the most common advice I’ve received not just about this situation, but any antagonism I’ve faced online. Don’t feed the trolls. It only matters if you let it.

There is some validity to this, especially on the Internet where directing attention toward conflict is like feeding oxygen to a flame.

By saying nothing, I would let his antagonism just hang there with nowhere to go.

There are two downsides I see, though:

1. I don’t get the emotional release that comes with speaking up for myself;

2. He might continue to stew, maybe even get angrier if the issue isn’t addressed. While the issues I had with my stepfather are not at all analogous to this situation, at the heart of my grudge against him was the anger I felt at the fact he never talked about what happened.

That brings me to the third option: a more conciliatory approach.

I could acknowledge the objections he has made, and while I didn’t intend to cast him as a villain, I can recognize the pain my words have caused him.

I’ll be transparent now: This is the least appealing option to me from an emotional standpoint. It feels passive, weak. Furthermore, it feels like something that has been a tendency of mine.

I can be overly accommodating. I can over apologize. I can be hesitant to draw hard boundaries on what I’m willing to do, and this can lead to situations where I make myself miserable by fulfilling the commitments I’ve been asked to take on.

If I keep following this line of thinking I’ll talk myself into the idea that I absolutely should stand up to this former co-worker who made this video about me. If I work at it, I can become convinced it’s a matter of principle.

But if I take a beat, press pause on that inner-monologue, and take a few deep breaths I can find the room to be a little less emotional, a little more pragmatic.

This situation is not necessarily a microcosm of my life. In fact, if I look at it with a more discerning eye, it doesn’t have all that much to do with the things that I have a tendency to struggle with.

This is not a person I’ve spent years accommodating nor is it someone I’ve had to tiptoe around. We don’t work together anymore, and while we were supportive of each other early in my time at the radio station, there has been significantly more distance over the last six years particularly.

What is the end result that I want here?

I don’t want this to be a conflict.

And while I can only control half the equation in that regard, I do have control over that half.

So I’m not going to object to what was posted about me. I’m not going to argue over the timeline or the characterizations. I’m not going to add any antagonism.

Instead, I’m going to address the things that upset him.

I wished that I hadn’t used his name in that essay I wrote about my worst day in radio. I regret that I used “hissed” to describe the sound of his voice in my headphones. I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear that I never, ever thought any of this was malicious. His response was a natural reaction to my honest mistake, and while the essay I wrote was intended to be about my own growth, I can see why he felt it was unfair to him. I’m sorry for how I wrote it.

I also regret the Twitter comment in which I described him as “increasingly volatile.” It was an off-handed remark and not something I thought was overly pejorative. I think there were times that I was “increasingly volatile” while working at the radio station, but applying that label to him was entirely unnecessary and I can see why it bothered him. I’m sorry for posting it.

I was bummed to see the video. It bothers me to be blamed for the pain someone else is experiencing, and while my natural inclination was to defend my own actions by pointing to the purity of my intentions, I can see and hear that he feels like he was left hung out to dry.

That’s too bad. He has a great sense of humor, is a very talented musician and he shares my appreciation for the vocal cadences of the pro-wrestling manager Jim Cornette.

If I write about my former co-worker again, I’m going to be more respectful. I’m also going to keep an eye out for opportunities to mention positive memories because there certainly were some.

I don’t know how all of this is going to land, but that’s always the case when you’re trying to plot a course through emotionally fraught terrain.

Emotions shouldn’t be used as a compass in this sort of situation. It’s best to acknowledge them first, and then pick out the destination where you really want to end up.

It might take you a while to get there. I’ve been working on this particularly route for two weeks, but I think I’ve got my route plotted out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s really impressive.

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Especially when you consider the average life span for a crow is seven to eight years.

Crows, it would seem, are more than just single-generational haters.

At least that’s the conclusions drawn by a fascinating and slightly hilarious experiment at the University of Washington, which just so happens to be the school I attended. Using an ogre mask and a keen ear, John Marzluff demonstrated that crows have long memories and something of a short fuse for specific people who cross them.

It also – in a somewhat roundabout way – shows why we humans might harbor inclinations for payback when we feel we’ve been harmed. But before we get that far, I need to tell you about these birds.

🔬The experiment 🧪

John Marzluff is a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington, an author and someone who has a special interest in and affection for crows. He’s gone so far as to dub them “black-feathered practitioners of life-long learning.”

In 2006, he set out to find out just how long crows would stay mad.

He did this with a highly technical tool:

That’s a plastic mask.

That’s Marzluff wearing the plastic mask in a screenshot from a UW TV report on the experiment.

While wearing the mask, he went out on campus and captured a total of seven crows.

This was done in broad daylight in full view of the crows in the area.

Now, as you may know a group of crows is known as a murder, but in this case, that is not any foreshadowing.

The captured birds were tagged with a band affixed to their leg and then free.

However, the crows did not exactly move on.

The reason we know this is because periodically over the next 17 years, Marzluff or a member of his research team would don the caveman mask and trudge over to the fountain where they’d be scolded by the crows.

“We learned when they see the mask of the person who had captured them, they go crazy basically,” Marzluff told the UW TV interviewer. “They dive at us and attack and shriek.”

Scolding is not a metaphor.

It’s the term used to describe the aggressive cawing that crows engage in, and any time an experimenter walked by with the mask, it spiked when compared to the reaction to non-mask-wearing pedestrians.

Seven years after the initial abductions, experimenters were scolded by approximately half the crows they encountered. It then began to taper off. However, it wasn’t until 2023 – 17 years after the triggering incident – that Marzluff was able to walk the area in the ogre mask without any of the 16 crows he encountered reacting to his presence.

Crows, it seems, have long memories. Not only that, they are able to communicate a perceived threat to other crows, who not only take note, but echo the alarm.

It’s kind of awesome when you think about it. I’d love it if a murder like that had my back!

😡 Does it qualify as a grudge?

Well first, we need a working definition.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a grudge as “a feeling of deep-seated resentment or ill-will.”

Oxford Languages goes a step further: “a persistent feeling of ill-will or resentment resulting from past insult or injury.”

I’ll also throw in a more plain-speaking definition from psychologist Angela Duckworth, who offered that “roughly speaking, a grudge is the opposite of forgiveness” during an episode of her podcast, “No Stupid Questions.”

In this case, the crows demonstrated sustained hostility toward a figure that had committed a clear transgression against members of their community.

Not only that, but the hostility persisted beyond the generation of crows who were subjected to or witnessed the initial abductions.

Yes, I think it’s fair to say that crows are capable of holding grudges, which means they’re absolutely my kind of birds.

❌ Disclaimer: I’m about to make this about me ❌

I have a fairly good memory.

It’s not photographic certainly, but it is — based on my own experiences — better than average.

Over the years, I have used my memory as a filing system for the various instances in which I feel I’ve been harmed or hurt.

I’ve even made it into something of a bit by doing things like expressing my disbelief at the high-school P.E. teacher who logged my height as 4 feet 11 and one-half inches at the end of my ninth grade year.

This did in fact happen, and I have joked that because she refused to round up and list me at 5 feet, I hope she died old and lonely. I didn’t really mean that, though. It’s just a humorous punchline to the story.

Other grudges have been more serious.

More specifically, I harbored a deep resentment against my stepfather after he betrayed my mother and spent through their shared retirement savings. I am not entirely embarrassed about the fact I outlasted the crows on that one, hating my stepfather for a solid 20 years.

I would joke that this grudge and the other, less serious grievances, saying it was evidence that I was ugly on the inside.

Being more transparent, I knew that this wasn’t entirely healthy.

I talked to therapists about it.

I did exercises to try and release or at least dilute the resentment I felt.

This would often times help for a little bit, but pretty soon I’d find myself ruminating again about what my stepfather had done and imagining ways I might get back at him.

When this happened, I would feel like there must be something wrong with me because I had been able to actually let go of those emotions. Twenty years after my Mom divorced my stepfather, I still wanted to scold him in public or — better yet — swoop down and peck at his noggin.

I see it differently now.

I think it’s natural to feel hostility toward someone or something you believe has harmed you.

I think it’s an instinct that is wired deeply within us. Something that can be traced back to our very primitive ancestors when reacting aggressively to threats wasn’t a way of life so much as a strategy for self-preservation.

And when that desire for retribution flares up, I imagine a crow squawking at a rubber-masked intruder. It’s a reaction that I’m having in that moment to the memory of someone who might be a threat.

It’s a remarkable piece of psychological programming in some ways. Something that was probably very useful back when our ancestors first began living in groups.

This feeling doesn’t make me a bad person. In fact, it’s part of what makes me human, and perhaps a little bit of a crow!

REFERENCES

• If you think you can hold a grudge, consider the crow | By Thomas Fuller

  The New York Times | Oct. 28, 2024

• “Crows: Smarter than you think” | A video of a lecture from John Marzloff

• “The Crow Whisperer” | UW TV

It wasn’t the content that surprised me so much as the author.

Peter Vecsey is a former pro basketball reporter and one of the most acidic personalities I’ve ever encountered. He is retired now, but as a columnist, he embodied the New York Post’s approach to … well … everything.

I was surprised to see ANYTHING from Vecsey for reasons I’ll eventually get to.

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But after the shock of seeing his words, I felt a tinge of recognition.

His words were exactly the kind of thing I might have said five or six years ago because back then, I felt a respect perhaps even admiration for people who were willing to hold onto their anger over some past slight they’d suffered.

I saw it as a sign of strength.

I no longer feel this way, though, and at a personal level, I’m a lot happier because of that. Before I get to that, though, let’s talk about the grudge in question.

😡 Thirty-five years of animosity 😡

Michael Jordan and Isaiah Thomas are two of the very best basketball players of their generation.

Thomas is from Chicago, and he won two championships with the Detroit Pistons. Jordan is from North Carolina, but he played professionally in Chicago where he won six titles with the Bulls. Many people (including me) consider MJ to be the best player ever.

There has been serious tension between the two of them for much of that generation.

More specifically, Jordan harbored a grudge against Thomas, and while he doesn’t usually spell it out this explicitly, most people who closely follow the NBA understand that it relates (primarily) to two things:

1. In 1985, Jordan was frozen out in the All-Star Game as a rookie;

2. In 1991, Thomas and his Pistons walked off the floor without shaking hands with Jordan and the Bulls after Chicago won the Eastern Conference championship.

There has always been a bit of an urban legend that these two incidents caused Jordan to conspire to have Thomas omitted from the 1992 Olympics, the so-called Dream Team.

Thomas, for his part, has denied the All-Star freezeout ever occurred. As for walking off the floor, Thomas said that’s what the Celtics had done to the Pistons several years earlier.

Up until five years ago, Thomas professed ignorance of Jordan’s (fairly obvious) disdain. That became impossible after the multi-part documentary “The Last Dance” in which Jordan called Thomas an (orifice) and discussed the Thomas’ Olympic omission. Jordan said, quite specifically, he never asked Thomas be left off let alone insisted on it.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say they’re mortal enemies though it’s worth noting two things about this:

1. Jordan is legendary grudgeholder;

2. He’s certainly not the first star basketball player to deeply dislike Thomas.

🧠 Let’s think about it 🧠

Here are two men in their 60s who are among the best to ever play pro basketball. Both have close ties to Chicago, and they are still at odds over things that were done 35 years ago.

Five years ago … there was part of me that felt this is exactly how real men handle things. You cross a line, there are consequences and those consequences don’t dissipate over time.

Jordan didn’t pretend that he and Isiah were friends. He didn’t offer bland compliments or present a façade of peace. He had nothing to do with Thomas and didn’t appear to be concerned with what Thomas might do or say about him.

Doesn’t mean you have to fight. We’re certainly past dueling with pistols at dawn, but I believed it fine to decide, “I hate that dude,” grit your teeth and mean it forever.

Some of this … no … a lot of this was tied up in my own unresolved anger toward my stepfather.

I was still mad not so much at what he’d done, but my belief he’d remained totally unaccountable for what he’d done. When I’d asked to have a conversation about what had occurred within our family, he ignored me. He never acknowledged to me, let alone apologized, for the things that happened and as a result I had no intention of letting go of that anger.

That’s how a man handles things, I thought.

In fact, it is how men often handle it, but I don’t think that’s a compliment.

Where does that get you?

That’s not a rhetorical question. What is the result of holding onto resentment, maintaining not just a cognizance of past slights but a ferocity over them?

💣 Tick, tick, tick 💣

My willingness to hold on to my anger resulted in an increasing collection of petty feuds and legitimate beefs.

A radio host at a rival station insulted my wife on Twitter after a column of hers was published in The Seattle Times.

In the early days of the pandemic, a troll began to target not just me, but my co-workers on the radio show I hosted. I was deeply bothered by his harassment.

Beneath all of that was the enduring hostility I harbored against my stepfather. It provided something of a template for how I dealt with my anger or more accurately failed to deal with it.

At the core of all these grudges was a desire to do something that would cause these people to regret what they’d done to me and/or the people I loved.

I also knew that seeking revenge in that way is seen as immature and picking fights is also known as “assault.” I decided I was just going to hold onto my anger, occasionally stoking the embers by thinking about what that person had done.

It was an increasingly unpleasant way to live and over the past few years — with the help of a therapist — I’ve come to understand the power of acceptance. It’s a useful tool that’s allowed me to move past the pain I experienced even when the person who I blame for causing that pain refused to acknowledge what he’d done.

That doesn’t mean you have to forgive. It certainly doesn’t mean you should forget, but it does provide a way to dilute the pain caused by a specific person or event.

That brings me back to that Tweet that started this whole train of thought.

🔑 Unlocking animosity 🔑

I have no idea how much time or energy Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas spend prosecuting their feud. I don’t know how much (if any pain) they feel over it.

For all I know, it could be a source of meaning in their respective lives.

I do know that approach made me increasingly angry and more volatile, and when I look at their feud, I see two men who remain hung up on past slights, both real and imagined.

As for Peter Vecsey, the journalist whose Tweet I was surprised to see. I never met him though I did see him at several NBA games back when I was covering the Seattle Supersonics from 2002 to 2005. He was unmistakable in his suits and close-cropped beard.

The reason I was surprised to see his Tweet is not just because he’s retired. You see, he blocked on Twitter several years ago, which in fairness to him, was not entirely unwarranted.

I had responded to something he posted by referencing an incident that had occurred in Seattle back in 1996 when he was charged with fourth-degree assault for striking a man at a Toys R Us. Seriously: that happened.

That was back when I still thought feuds were a sign of strength, though, and while I’m not going to say that I was wrong for bringing this up in the way I did, I will say that I’ve been working to become less cantankerous over these past few years and will continue to do so.

I did not set out to harbor a grudge against my stepfather for 20 years.

In fact, I made multiple attempts—most under the guidance of a therapist—to resolve or at least dilute the anger I felt toward him.

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I wrote a letter to my stepfather, sealed the envelope and gave it to my therapist.

I wrote a letter to my stepfather, and burned it in the backyard firepit.

I participated in role-playing exercises where I ranted at my therapist as if he was my stepfather.

I participated in role-playing exercises where I played the part of my stepfather, reciting the things that (I thought) Young Danny wanted to hear.

None of this provided any sort of lasting closure, and in retrospect, I believe that was because I did not understand why I was so angry. I mean, I knew what he did. I can still lay out the exact sequence of events that led to so much pain within my family.

But four years ago, if you’d ask me to explain why I was still angry at my stepfather, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything other than point to the magnitude of his misdeeds.

Now, I understand much better why I reacted the way that I did, and I believe the first step toward defusing my anger toward him was to understand what it was that actually bothered me most.

Before I dive into that, let’s get to a pair of grudges that are a little more straightforward:

“So if you think you’re petty, I dated a Disney actor and former child star for about two years, and then I found out on Valentine’s Day that he was not only hiding a four-year, long-term relationship, but that he had multiple women.

“But because I hold onto grudges, I like to go on his imdb every couple weeks, and I make him shorter. So this month, he is 5-1.5.”

— _annamelissa on TikTok

@_annamelissahe will not know peace 🥰💙

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The rapper Cardi B waited years to get payback for a physical altercation. YEARS.

But when she did finally cross paths with her “opp” as the kids now way, it was not only in another country, but they were getting screened at the airport.

The Grudge Judge will lay out exactly what happened and provide a ruling on who was right, who was wrong:

OK. Let’s get back to my stepfather.

For a long time, I thought that a direct confrontation would be the only way for me to resolve the anger I harbored toward him.

Turns out I had that exactly backwards. It was only after I resolved my anger that I spoke to him for the first time in 18 years.

And in retrospect, I was only able to find that closure after I answered two questions:

1. What was I mad about?

2. What was I really mad about?

This may sound not only redundant, but a little bit silly. Bear with me because one of the most important things to understand about resentment in general and grudges in particular is that they operate on two different levels:

At the surface level, there are the actual events that occurred. The truth of what happened. What specific incident do you feel harmed you?

At a deeper level is the context in which that event occurred. This takes into account your own personal experiences as well as the history you share with the grudgee (i.e. the person whose action or actions you believe harmed you).

The surface-level acts are what we generally cite to explain the cause of our resentment. The context, however, is what actually gives a grudge its horsepower.

Let’s use the grudge I held against my stepfather as an example.

What was I mad about?

I was mad at what he’d put my mom through:

• Cheating on her;

• Lying about having cheated on her;

• Losing his job as a public-school administrator in a very public, somewhat scandalous fashion;

• Spending through their shared retirement savings after he lost that job;

• Pushing to reconcile after they’d been separated for two years, only to inform her he’d then tested positive for HIV.

All of those things definitively happened and while the infidelity remained largely a private matter, the San Jose Mercury News wrote multiple stories about the spending indiscretions that occurred in the school district where he was superintendent. I have a copy of the 7-minute investigative report that aired on the Bay Area’s ABC affiliate.

It all hurt my Mom a great deal, which bothered me.

That was the surface-level view of why I was mad.

If those were the things I was really mad about, however, I believe my anger would have ebbed over time. My Mom tested negative for HIV. She finalized the divorce. While he didn’t wind up fulfilling the spousal support he’d agreed to, she was able to keep the house they’d shared and the car she drove. She continued to work and while she wasn’t wealthy, she was comfortable. She (eventually) cut off contact with him and toward the end of her life, she told me that she really didn’t think about him that much anymore, which I was pleased to hear.

Yet I not only stayed mad after she divorced him, it’s possible I got even angrier.

So what was I really mad about?

I was mad that he never acknowledged, let alone apologized, for the way he wronged my Mom specifically, but also the way he betrayed the trust that I’d placed in him even as I grew to dislike him.

I was 15 years old when they married, and he immediately installed himself as the authority figure overseeing my adolescence.

He was the one who disciplined me over my mistakes when I was a teenager, not my Mom. He would periodically summon me into his bedroom, close the door and spend a good 15 to 20 minutes lecturing me for something like a chore I failed to do or the way that I had spoken to my mother or my younger siblings. He would then contrast my behavior with the fact that he had always been there for his family both when he was growing up and now that he was married to my mom. It wasn’t just that he was strict, he was self-righteous and demanded an extreme level of accountability from me. I was selfish where he had been selfless.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. I was a pretty normal teenager, perhaps even a bit unruly. I did my share of stupid, self-indulgent and dishonest things.

When we found out he had some stupid, self-indulgent and dishonest things, though, he never was able to be honest about it with my mom, my siblings or me even when asked directly.

In November 2002, he’d been separated from my Mom for more than a year. He sent me a card, inviting me to come visit him in San Francisco some time before Christmas. He gave me an email address to respond to, and I sent him an email stating that there would need to be an honest conversation about what had occurred in our family before I’d visit him. I never heard back.

The next time I spoke to him was May 2005 when we both attended my brother’s college graduation at UC Santa Cruz. I knew he’d been invited, and my brother had told me I wasn’t expected to behave in any particular way.

I was standing next to my sister and two of my cousins when he approached me from the left and then opened his arms in expectation of a hug.

I felt my cheeks bloom red, the blood rushing to my head. It felt like a spotlight was trained on me. I was afraid to do anything that might cause a scene, I put my left arm around him.

I spent years resenting myself for that reaction. I felt like I was weak. Like I was a teenager again, standing there and listening to him explain what I was expected to do except I was 30 years old and knew that he was not nearly as virtuous and upright as he’d portrayed himself.

I spent years feeling ashamed for not having stood up to him either at my brother’s college graduation or the years that preceeded it. This was the deeper level of my grudge.

So looping back to the questions that started today’s newsletter.

What was I mad about? My stepfather’s betrayal of my Mom.

But what was I really mad about? The lack of accountability and the absence of remorse on his part. It made me feel weak. That I was unable or unwilling to stand up to him even when tit was clear he was in the wrong.

It turns out that this was a very important distinction. If my grudge had just been about what my stepfather had done, I believe my grudge would have faded over the years.

What really bothered me, however, was his lack of accountability, which meant that my anger actually compounded over time because he still hadn’t expressed remorse about what had happened.

His lack of accountability then became evidence of my continued weakness. I was a doormat. I had just let it happen. Even after it occurred I hadn’t stood up to him.

Honestly, I can still feel traces of that shame. But now it’s counterbalanced with some compassion for my younger self. A recognition that I was doing my best to navigate a very fraught emotional situation without adding to the pain that my mom and siblings were feeling.

The only way I could get to that point, though, was to realize what it was that really made me angry at my stepfather.

Today before the court, we have the case of the Bronx rapper Cardi B’s resolution of her seven-year grudge against Rah Ali, who like Cardi B is from the Bronx and was also a cast-member on the VH1 show “Love & Hip-Hop.”

To wit, Mrs. Cardi B, who will identified as the aggressor in these proceedings, was struck by Mrs. Rah Ali back in 2018, and because of this she believes she was entitled to, and I quote, “get her lick back” which she did in July 2025 when she threw a piece of stereo equipment at the respondent in Cannes, France.

Mrs. Rah Ali contends that the aggressor “looks so stupid” and this incident is “goofy” making everyone look bad.

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The Grudge Judge now asks that everyone settle down so we may proceed through the testimony to determine whether the aggressor’s actions were in fact justified. It should be noted that while the judge did not actually interrogate either witness, all their quotations are verbatim quotes taken from the following two sources:

• The Twitter Spaces Cardi B on hosted Aug. 1, 2025 to explain what happened in France.

• Rah Ali’s podcast discussion Ray Daniels in which she laid out her version of the confrontation with Cardi B.

The initiating event

In 2018, the aggressor, Mrs. Cardi B, was involved in a confrontation with Nikki Minaj, a fellow rapper.

This is in and of itself is not totally surprising as as both Nikki Minaj and Cardi B are from New York and people from that city tend to be rather feisty, especially in public spaces. Additionally, both women are rappers, which means they work in an industry where it is standard practice for artists to insult one another at various levels of transparency and then argue about who actually insulted (or dissed) whom.

The incident happened during Fashion Week. There is a video of the commotion surrounding the altercation, but it was impossible to see what actually happened. There were no criminal charges. However, Nikki Minaj has said that Rah Ali “beat up” Cardi B.

Cardi B subsequently indicated that she was struck by Rah Ali while being restrained by Minaj’s security.

Recorded testimony

The aggressor asserts she had not seen the respondent for years following that incident. But in the summer of 2025, both women were in Cannes, France. More specifically, at the airport.

(Editor’s note: While this courtroom scenario is entirely fiction, the actual quotes from Rah Ali and Cardi B have been taken from recorded public statements they provided about the incident. In other words, the presentation is fiction, the quotes are not.)

(Grudge Judge turns to address the aggressor, Mrs. Cardi B)

Now, Mrs. Cardi B, what were you doing at the airport?

Cardi B: “I’m about to fly to Paris to shoot my album content. Everybody’s waiting for me.”

And then you see the respondent?

Cardi B: “I’m in the line, my thing is about to go through TSA and whatever. And I turn around, and I literally see this woman, she’s in a wheelchair, and she looked like in distress or something. She looked in distress so I looked at her. I couldn’t even believe my eyes because I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

What did you do then?

Cardi B: “I looked at her, and I said, ‘You good?’ And she said, ‘I don’t feel well.’ And I’m like, ‘OK.’ “

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

OK, Mrs. Rah Ali, what can you tell me about this day in the airport?

Rah Ali: “She has like a red dress on. I’ll show you the video because I definitely took my phone out immediately and pressed record. She’s chewing a bagel.”

Why were you in a wheelchair?

Rah Ali: “Because I didn’t feel well.”

Were you perhaps also trying to get through security quicker?

Rah Ali: “I really genuinely had a cold. I did a virtual appointment with a doctor, and got a Z-pack. I wasn’t feeling that good.”

Fair enough.

(Grudge Judge turns back to the aggressor)

OK, Mrs. Cardi B, you’ve seen the respondent. She’s in a wheelchair. What happens next?

Cardi B: “I told my security, right, ‘Yo, this chick is right behind me.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh my God. She’s in a wheelchair.’

“So I asked him, ‘What should I do?’ Because at the end of the day, we are in France, and you know, it would have been really easy for me to just snuff her in a wheelchair, but I’m like, ‘What should I do?’ because we’re in France.”

OK. I must be misunderstanding something. Isn’t the purpose of security to prevent your own involvement in altercations. It sounds like you were asking his advice on whether to initiate one.

Cardi B: “My security been my security already for six years1 … so his opinion to me, matters. Not even his opinion, but I would never like to look (weak) in front of my security because I feel like if I do some (weak) (stuff), I know my security is going to be like, “(Ma’am), you’re (weak).” Because that’s the type of relationship that we have.”

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

So Mrs. Rah Ali, I assume you’re watching all of this?

Rah Ali: “She goes to her security and she says to him, ‘That’s …’ whatever she says to him. I see him lean over like this, and she’s telling him in his ear, so I just take like the bag that’s in my lap and I put it on the wheelchair part because I know I’m probably going to have to stand up.”

(Grudge Judge turns to the aggressor)

Cardi B: “So I’m on the line, and I see that she’s stood up now. Now, she’s not in the wheelchair. Now she’s standing, but she’s staring at me. Like, she’s staring at me like literally staring at me. She’s not getting her eyes off of me. So now I’m already thinking to myself just like, ‘(Forget) it. It is what it is.’ “

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

Rah Ali: “I’ve stood up now because I don’t know what any of them are going to do. I’m always looking to be the mature person at this point because I have too much to lose, but I’m definitely by nature a fighter. My heart doesn’t pump Kool-Aid, and I will go down like down into my last second of breathing and I’m going to bang. It is what it is.

“I just was like, ‘Girl, grow up.’

“She’s like, ‘Grow up? Grow up?’ ”

(Grudge Judge turns to the aggressor)

Cardi B: “So that’s when I threw a JBL speaker on her head. And she said, ‘You feel better about yourself?’ And then she’s acting like now she’s going to fight. But she wasn’t being like aggressive. She was like, ‘OK.’ Because I guess she was sick. I don’t know what was wrong with her.”

(Grudge Judge turns back to the respondent)

Was something thrown at you?

Rah Ali: “She takes her shoes off. She starts throwing her shoes. She starts throwing her bags. I don’t know. She starts throwing her bags.”

Cardi B interjects: “I don’t know why she’s saying that I was throwing a shoe, and why you’re not saying you got hit in the head with whatever, but whatever.”

(Grudge Judge motions to calm everyone; looks to the respondent)

What did she say next?

Rah Ali: “Immediately she starts yelling and cursing and screaming, ‘Oh, wassup?Wassup (ma’am)? Yeah (ma’am)? You thought I wasn’t going to get my lick back? What you thought? What you thought, (ma’am)?’ ”

Cardi B (interjects): “You know I’m not lying because even herself said, ‘You thought I wasn’t going to get back my lick back?’ I wouldn’t have said that if it was just me arguing with her. I wouldn’t have said that if a shoe went flying somewhere. You know I said, ‘I got my lick back,’ because you got hit.”

(Grudge Judge bangs his gavel)

OK. Is there anything else?

Cardi B: “My security was like, now he’s in between both of us because now the police is really coming. They’re really rushing to the part of the airport, and she was saying, ‘You feel good now? You good? That’s what you wanted?’

“I kept saying, ‘Yeah, that’s what I wanted. Of course I’m going to get my lick back.’ “

(Grudge Judge looks to the respondent)

Rah Ali: “She’s yelling to the top of her lungs now. Of course, now the airport people are coming over, and I was just like, ‘This is so goofy.’ Ultimately, the end result was nothing.”

(Grudge Judge looks to the aggressor)

At the end of the day, do you think this was a mature way to handle this situation?

Cardi B: “I know that I’m grown and I shouldn’t have that mentality, but let’s be (freaking) for real. If I wouldn’t have said nothing, and if I would have been an adult, she still would have come on and would have been like, ‘Oh, I saw Cardi B and she didn’t do nothing. She’s (weak).’ “

So this was about showing you’re tough?

Cardi B: “I’m not even trying to sound tough. I’m just glad this happened, and if that’s how God wanted it to happen, it happened. And for y’all talking about, ‘Cardi, you’re 32 years older, bla, bla, bla you’re a whole A-list …’

“If you think somebody was going to physically touch me while I’m being pinned down by security, and you think I’m not going to get my lick back, you’re bugging.”

OK, I think we’ve heard all the testimony we need. I’m going to take a few minutes to surf the Internet and review source material, and I’ll be back with my ruling.

(Grudge Judge turns to the aggressor)

Mrs. Cardi B you were playing a risky game here, triggering a confrontation at an airport in a foreign country. Had either of you been punished or even inconvenienced, this (totally made-up) court would hold you entirely responsible for any and all damages incurred.

However, much like the first altercation, nothing happened beyond the initial altercation. No one appears to have been arrested, charged or even inconvenienced all that much beyond the ruckus in the security line. Travel plans remained intact.

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

Now, Mrs. Rah Ali. I sympathize with your situation here. You were in a weakened state and in a foreign country when you were approached by someone who became intent on achieving some level of payback for something that happened seven years ago.

Do I think it was mature on the part of the aggressor to hold onto this particular grudge? No, I do not. I’ve heard you point out that the aggressor has had three children as evidence she needs to outgrow this sort of behavior. On a personal level, I tend to agree. I know you are also a mother.

However, I also think back to a lesson that my father instilled in me when I was growing up in rural Oregon: If you strike someone else first, you can’t go complaining about what happens next. More specifically, he told me if I started a fight I had no right to object to the method someone else used to finish it.

By all indications, you struck the aggressor back in 2018. The fact that she struck you back this summer is a direct response to that.

Neither instance resulted in arrests and charges. Everyone was free to continue on with their lives. Therefore, it is the finding of this court that this matter amounts to off-setting personal fouls with no one being punished further.

The scorecard is officially even between the two parties, but I want to be very clear that no further recriminations will be tolerated.

If I see these two parties in this court again, whoever breaks the equilibrium that is now established will be held responsible for any damages that result and lectured as by me as if they were a small child.

Verdict: Grudge dismissed.

Sources

• Nikki Minaj talks about the initial altercation with Cardi B in which she says Rah Ali beat her up “really, really bad.” Vibe summarized this episode of Queen Radio, providing the specifics of the altercation.

This is a podcast episode looks into the background of the grudge I held against my stepfather and the factors that made it more difficult for me to let go.

The studio was clean and comfortable, and there was a large bay window looking out into the newsroom for the news and political stations that were part of this particular radio cluster.

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In the time I worked there, I repeatedly imagined a very specific scenario:

I would look out the window of our studio, and see my stepfather walking across the newsroom, toward the studio used by the news-talk station.

I would stop mid-sentence on my own show.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go take care of something.”

I’d remove my headphones, open the 10-pound door to the sound-proof studio, walk into the newsroom and proceed directly toward the KIRO studio where I would join that interview.

“Sorry to interrupt, but this man was married to my mom for 13 years. I’m interested to hear what he’s doing now, and I’ve also got some questions for him.”

This was not a likely scenario. My stepfather did not live in Seattle, and I had no reason to think he was involved in any endeavor that would receive media attention. It was not completely implausible, though. For a time, he lived in the same state, and as a former public-school administrator, he had received quite a bit of attention from the Bay Area press, much of it scathing. I also knew he had started what appeared to be a life-coaching business.

I then imagined asking him a series of blunt questions:

• Would you say you were faithful to my mom?

• Do you think it was appropriate that as the superintendent of a one-school district, you were driving an $80,000 BMW the district paid for?

• Marrying my mom was something of a financial windfall for you, wasn’t it?

• Why did you spend through the retirement savings you shared with my mom?

[Side note: This is perhaps the worst premise ever for a revenge movie. “I’m going to show you what real determination looks like by asking you some strongly worded questions ...”]

Over the past few years, I’ve come to understand that this recurring fantasy was an expression of how much I wanted him to see something that resembled accountability. It was only last week, however, that I read a pretty compelling description of what this fantasy was actually doing to my brain (Hint: It wasn’t good).

• “This is your brain on revenge”

  By James Kimmel Jr. | Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025

Kimmel is a former lawyer who is now a lecturer at Yale. He’s spent years researching the subject, paying particular attention to the neuroscience.1

The first half resonated deeply with my own experience.

The second half? Not so much.

You see, Kimmel presents forgiveness as the antidote to these revenge desires, a detox.

That doesn’t reflect my experience, though. I’ve let go of the grudge that I held against my stepfather. I’m no longer indulging in revenge fantasies, and when I did ultimately get a chance to interview him, it was not the strongly worded interrogation I spent so many years imagining. It was cordial. I did a lot of listening.

But even now, I haven’t forgiven my stepfather, and in my opinion, the fact that I’ve found closure points to an underlying flaw in Kimmel’s model.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and pitch you on “The Interrogator.” I am going to take a look at some movies that deal with the desire for retribution, and I’ll start by establishing the one thing that any true revenge film must have. Here’s a hint: It’s missing from “Taken.”

If you’ve got any thoughts on this piece or even want to nominate a revenge flick for the Film Room, feel free to leave a note in the comments:

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I finally found out when I spoke to him in December 2023, the first time I’d seen him in 18 years. His answer surprised me more than it should have and provided a reminder of the one thing you must remember when dealing with even a moderate narcissist: It’s never really about you.

Author’s note: This is a test-kitchen of sorts for first-person narrative writing on my family.

Feel free to leave comments as if this were a workshop. You can also ask any questions. I’m still thinking through everything from the structure to the ethics. You can be as nosy as you’d like, but I’d prefer you remain cognizant that I am a real person writing about my actual family. The one request I have: be gentle with my mom. She was a supremely sweet woman whose life was tougher than anyone deserves, let alone someone who was as nice as she was. She also loved her kids very, very much, and was well-loved in return.

Saturday, Sept. 24, 1988

I know the exact date because it was my father’s funeral. He had Still’s Disease, an inflammatory condition that usually consists of extremely high fevers and arthritis. What began as puzzling soreness in his early 20s progressed to the point that it was painful to move by his mid-30s. He could barely leave the house during the final year of his life, and in the final weeks, we brought him a plastic jug so he could relieve himself in bed without getting up. He was 38 when he died.

I was 13, the oldest of the three children he’d had with my Mom. The fact we called him Pop could be traced back to the fact that my pronunciation of “Dad” sounded like “dog” when I was learning to speak.

I can’t tell you whether I wore a tie to Pop’s funeral. I don’t what my brother, my sister or my mom wore, either. I know that the ceremony was at Sacred Heart, the church that was attached to the small Catholic school we attended in southern Oregon. After the funeral, we loaded into the backseat of my grandfather’s Cadillac, and I do remember the creamy leather interior being cooler than I expected. Grandpa must have parked in the shade. We drove east to Mt. Calvary cemetery, where my father was buried.

Afterward, attendees gathered at our house. People congregated mainly in the backyard, but at some point I found myself out front and I watched as the principal of our school pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the concrete porch.

I heard my Mom before I saw her. She called out the principal’s first name.

He stopped, turned around to look back toward the house.

Now, Mom came through the screen door.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she said.

She reached out to him, taking his hand in both of hers and looked at him.

That’s it. That’s the memory I have. The meaning I drew out of this moment, however, has changed. Repeatedly.

At the time: I felt kind of flattered the principal was there. I wouldn’t say that I knew him. In fact, I can’t remember having a conversation with him before that. The fact he came to our house felt like proof that our loss was seen as significant in our community.

That changed when: My mom began dating the principal the following year. They were engaged by the fall and married on Jan. 27, 1990. That summer, we moved to the central coast of California, leaving the small town in southern Oregon where I had been born.

Then I began to feel: uncomfortable.

I had this clear memory of the principal at our house on the day of my father’s funeral, but I never mentioned it. I worried what people would think if they knew how quickly my mom remarried after Pop’s death. I thought they might assume my parents were no longer married when he’d died or they’d think that my mom was already scoping out alternatives or perhaps they’d believe I was inferring the principal was looking for an angle into my family.

Even as I grew to dislike the principal in the years following his marriage to my mom, I remained protective to a certain degree. I didn’t want anyone to think his courtship of my mom was anything other than straightforward and earnest because I didn’t he was anything other than straightforward and earnest. At least not until the marriage came apart.

That changed when: my mom divorced the principal.

She found evidence he’d been unfaithful back in 2001, and after she confronted him, he moved out of the house.1 For the next two years, he remained adamant he had not cheated. He swore that she was wrong and didn’t understand the situation. Then in the summer of 2003, after he’d made his biggest push to reconcile, he called to tell her he had tested positive for HIV and she needed to be tested. She tested negative and filed for divorce shortly thereafter, seeing this as confirmation of his extreme dishonesty.

All of this coincided with the fairly public and thoroughly spectacular collapse of his career. He’d resigned his position as a public-school superintendent after both county officials and local reporters investigated his district’s spending practices from the BMW that had been purchased for his use to the $462 Cartier fountain pen charged to a district credit card. He was the subject of a seven-minute investigative report that aired on the Bay Area’s ABC affiliate and covered repeatedly in the San Jose Mercury News. A story about him continuing to teach college classes at San Jose State while he was on medical leave from the district wound up on the front page of the paper.

Then I began to feel: angry and very confused about why he’d courted my mom.

The principal had a penchant for trying to be a savior of sorts. As a son, he’d stepped up to help care for his younger brothers after his father died. As a teacher, he sought to mentor young men who lacked direction. My mom wondered whether she had been one of his “rescue projects” as she phrased it.

I began to wonder, too. And this brought me back to that first time he came to my family’s home.

The principal had been 18 when this father died. He was the third in a run of five boys. He’d planned to go away to college, but after his father’s death, he remained home to help care for his two younger brothers who were still in grade school.

Did the principal see some shades of his own history in my family? Maybe he felt pulled to step in and provide a fatherly presence that his own family had lacked after his dad’s death.

He certainly didn’t view me or my siblings as baggage. He was absolutely willing to be a full-fledged parent.2

Even after the divorce, if I squinted hard enough, I could occasionally see through my anger and concede that perhaps the principal had nothing but the best intentions. He might have tried as hard as he could to fill this role he imagined for himself, but ultimately couldn’t hold it together after 11 years.

Perhaps he deserved more credit than I’d initially given him.

I’m skipping ahead quite a bit at this point.

We’re zooming past the 17 years during which I remained actively angry at the principal. We’re jumping over my mother’s cancer diagnosis in 2015 and her subsequent death in 2019. We’re going all the way to end of 2023 when I flew to San Francisco and drove up to Napa, Calif., for the specific purpose of interviewing the principal.

December 15, 2023

He was in his 70s now, I was approaching 50.

It had been more than 10 years since anyone in my family had spoken to him. I had not seen him since 2005 when he attended my younger brother’s college graduation.

He knew I was coming. I had spoken to him on the phone three times over the preceding year. In our last conversation, I had asked if I could interview him, saying I was writing about my adolescence, and he was certainly part of that. He was agreeable, enthusiastic even over the phone though he hedged once I was there.

He said he didn’t think he was ready to talk about his time in our family, his marriage. He said he’d just learned of my mom’s death and was still processing it. He said he was worried it would be too emotional and I would get angry. He expressed reservations about being interviewed for the purposes of “a product” as he put it, meaning my writing.

My initial reaction was one of disbelief. He had agreed to the interview, and now—after I’d flown across the country and driven up to see him—he was backing out. I thought about saying something to apply some of type of pressure for him to follow through on his commitment.

That’s not what I did, though. I made a conscious effort to keep any emotion off my face. I kept my voice calm. I said that I’d been pretty clear about my intentions. I was planning to write about my life, and his time in it. I felt it was only fair to ask him if he wanted to share his perspective and what he remembered from this period.

It was up to him, though. I couldn’t subpoena him. I could not treat him as a hostile witness. This was his decision.

We resumed walking and then went and got an afternoon snack at a nearby restaurant. When I indicated that I was getting tired and planned to return to my hotel, he raised his hand—pointer finger extended—and said, “Stewardess.”

“No, no, it’s OK,” I said.

It was cringy. I also knew it would make my siblings laugh when I told them about it.

The sun had set by the time we left the restaurant, and as I drove him back to his home in my rental car, he told me we could do the interview the following day. I made sure to provide only minimal reaction.

“OK,” I said. “We’ll see how you feel.”

The next day, we sat down in the living room of his second-floor condo the following day. I used my iPhone3 to record a conversation that ultimately spanned 5 and one-half hours. The television was playing in the background, tuned to the History channel which was airing a series of World War II documentaries. I didn’t ask him to turn it off because I didn’t want him to become more self-conscious of what he was saying.

He had a bulldog, whom he referred to as “Snuffers” before pointing out that the dog’s full name was “The Earl of Snuffington.” The dog would periodically jump on the couch, his labored breathing audible on the recording. At one point, Snuffers humped the principal’s leg.

“Oh, now stop that,” the principal said.

The principal brought up my father’s funeral on his own. He remembered coming out of the church to see my Mom sitting in the backseat of what he referred to as a limo, but was actually her father’s Cadillac.

“Your Mom was sitting recessed in the back seat,” the principal said, “and I just went to the window, and she immediately just extended her arms, she says, ‘Oh Terry! I’m so glad to see you.’

“We went over to your house for the wake.”

Actually, it was a reception after the burial.

Turns out the principal wasn’t really thinking about his family when he was at our house. He wasn’t really thinking about my family, either.

He was thinking about a letter from the church’s parish council, which the pastor—Charles Dreisbach—had delivered to him the previous week.

“He said, ‘Oh here, you’re not going to like this,’ “ the principal said. “He hands me this, I open it up and they had cut my salary in half or nearly in half because I was no longer principal of a high school.”

When the principal came to our small Catholic school in 1986, it was a K-through-12 school with dwindling enrollment. Two years later, the high school was shuttered, leaving it K-through-8^th grade.

“That was what I was occupied with as I was milling around with other board members,” the principal said.

I felt a tug of disbelief as he said this, but I was more amused than I was angry. This man had absolutely no feel for his audience. He’s talking to me about the day my father was buried, and saying that what was really on his mind was his paycheck. I tried to remain attentive to what he was saying, it is possible that some sort of emotion flashed across my face because he acknowledged the potential faux pas.

“I remember it probably was not appropriate,” he said, “but it all kind of fit.”

He then named two different families whose children were classmates of mine, and who were at our house that day.

“I remember telling them, ‘The gall of that Dreisbach, he’s not going to cut my salary,’ “ the principal said. “I’m the one that closed the high school. You want to go through that, you get somebody else to go through that. You need to compensate me for the work I’ve done.’ “4

And then?

“I remember walking out your door,” he said, “and I saw that there was a rip in the screen.”

This was the moment I remembered. When my mom called his name and he turned around and she thanked him for coming.

There was, in fact, a rip in the screen. It was from our cat, a calico named Benny. When he wanted to come inside, Benny would jump up and grab hold of the screen with his claws, hanging with his back feet off the ground and causing the aluminum frame to bang against the frame, which would let us know to open the front door.

The principal said he then asked the school’s janitor—a fellow named Philip—to come and repair our screen. Then he stopped and corrected himself.

“I didn’t ask him, I told him,” the principal said, “ ‘I want you to go over to the O’Neils and repair their screen door.’ “

I don’t remember the screen being repaired, but I don’t doubt that it happened. I told the principal it was funny he’d remember something so specific.

“It’s those little things that start to sort of cascade over time,” the principal said. “So you’re Mom appreciated that and that and that.”

It seems like a nice gesture. It WAS a nice gesture. It’s also fairly telling that he was focused most on my mom’s reaction.

How I feel now: Some people think that narcissists never think of anyone but themselves. This is absolutely not true.

They think about others. They just don’t necessarily care about the needs of those people. They certainly don’t care about their needs as much as they care about getting their own met.

The principal’s interest in my mom specifically and my family in general never had anything to do with what we were going through or what we might need. It was entirely about how my mom responded to him. She was an incredibly nice and kind woman, who shared her warmth freely. That’s what he took from that day when he attended my father’s funeral and subsequently came to my family’s home.

I found one in last weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, though:

That covers the way I felt about my former stepfather from the age of 27 up until three years ago when I finally found something that could be called closure. That’s a solid 20 years of resentment in which I frequently fantasized about confrontations with him.

The root of my anger was pretty clear: my stepfather had been unfaithful and dishonest to my mom. He spent through their shared retirement savings. He broke her heart. I was also indignant at what I perceived to be his lack of accountability.

After he separated from my mom, he asked me to come visit him. I told him there would need to be an honest conversation about what was happening in the family if he wanted to maintain a relationship with me. He never responded to that request, and after my mom divorced him, I began to feel deeply ashamed that I had not done more to stand up to him first when I was a teenager and later when the marriage collapsed.1

I never actually did anything to the man. I didn’t even yell at him. I spent years, however, imagining a confrontation with him. It was—to use the framework presented in the Wall Street Journal essay—generating a hit of dopamine to mask the pain and anger I felt over how things ended. I was trying to apply psychological spackle to cover up a hole entirely too big to be patched in this manner.

This was, it turns out, the most compelling part of the article:

• This is your brain on revenge

  By James Kimmel Jr. | The Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025

Kimmel is a former lawyer, someone who identifies himself as previously being obsessed with revenge. He’s been researching the subject for several years now, and is a lecturer at Yale. He has a book out on the subject, “The Science of Revenge” and has recently appeared on podcasts with everyone from Dr. Phil to “The Armchair Expert” with Dax Sheppard.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time thinking and even envisioning methods for harming people who I believe have harmed me and my family, I found parts of Kimmel’s essay provided tremendous insight:

Kimmel says that drugs have a similar effect upon the brain, and from there characterizes the human desire for revenge as being a disease and potential addiction. In one interview I listened to, he compared revenge to the opiode crisis.

I found this part of his article significantly less convincing.

Revenge is frequently characterized as a disease or disorder. This happens in literature all the time, Western classics like “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It is done by academics, too. Psychologist Karen Horney did it in her paper “The Value of Vindictiveness,” which was published in 1948.

In these works, revenge is characterized as an alluring temptation we all feel, but once a person gives into it, it can co-opt and destroy their entire life.

What this model fails to account for is the fact that the desire for revenge is an instinct that exists across our species. It can be traced back to the value it provided to our primitive ancestors who used punishment and retribution as a way to organize their (small) societies.

But the bigger issue with describing the desire for revenge as a disease rather than a trait or a tendency is that it creates a scenario in which there should be a cure or a fix. This—almost invariably—is forgiveness. An emotional elixir. Something you need to practice in order to avoid having your life dominated by an insatiable appetite for payback.

Sure enough, that’s exactly where Kimmel winds up, citing research that showed forgiveness lessened neural activity within the brain’s pain network and increased activity in the region associated with self-control.

I’m not going to touch the religious references here.

I will say two things, however:

1. Presenting forgiveness as a cure or antidote for the toxin of revenge puts an onus on people who have been harmed and in some cases abused.

2. There is no evidence that someone who suffers trauma must forgive the person who inflicted that harm in order to recover from that trauma.

Now, forgiveness may help in that regard. In fact, it may often help. It’s not always necessary, however, and I believe that’s an important distinction to make because when people start talking about forgiveness as some sort of detox as Kimmel does, it applies pressure on people who’ve been harmed to forgive the people who harmed them.

Amanda Ann Gregory has spent 17 years counseling trauma victims. She’s also someone who experienced trauma herself. Her book “You Don’t Need to Forgive” was also published this year, and while she’s not against forgiveness nor does she dispute its power, she’s very specific in pointing out that forgiveness is not some sort of non-negotiable requirement for someone who is recovering from trauma.

Speaking only for myself, I have significantly reduced the amount of pain I feel over the actions of my stepfather. I do not spend as much time ruminating about his actions or imagining what I could do to harm or humiliate him. I am not as angry.

Also: I have not forgiven him.

Now some of that is due to the fact he’s never asked me to forgive him, either. Perhaps that’s because he can’t bring himself to recognize the impact his actions had on me. Perhaps it’s because he truly doesn’t believe he’s responsible the harm I feel I’ve suffered.

I’m not mad about this, but I wouldn’t say that I’ve forgiven him, either. I’ve simply chosen to stop relitigating what happened and declared that this specific chapter in my life is over. I’m not waiting to see if he expresses remorse and questioning if he feels bad. I’m not looking up his online profile to see where he’s living or what he might be up to. I’m not going to do something that I hope will set things right. There’s no score left to settle. It happened. It’s over. I’m moving on, and while I could see how someone might see this newsletter as an attempt to have the last word, I’m honestly not doing this to hold my stepfather or anyone else accountable for what happened.

I’m writing this newsletter for three primary reasons:

1. I think there’s value in exploring why I was unable to let go of this for 20 years.

2. I think it could be helpful to delve into the exact process that allowed me to let go of this animosity I felt or at least temper it dramatically.

3. I want to describe the relief and sense of peace I’ve found now that I’ve come out on the other side of what was an unyielding desire for retribution.

While I wouldn’t choose to characterize the desire for revenge as either a disease or a drug, I do believe that it can compound the suffering we experience as humans. I think it does this by fueling decisions we later regret as well as trapping us in mental cycles that keep us ruminating and therefore re-experiencing the pain we have previously suffered.

And while I think forgiveness is an admirable, maybe even noble goal, I do not think it applies in every instance. It certainly didn’t in mine. Here, I’ll quote again from Amanda Ann Gregory:

I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to revenge flicks. Not because I have refined taste in movies as I most certainly do not.

I might notice good cinematography. I might not. I’m not a stickler for realism, either, or even particularly good dialogue. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger is funny, and I don’t particularly care if that’s intentional.

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In other words: If you film some elaborate action sequences and stitch them together with a halfway competent plot, I’m unlikely to offer much of an objection.

However, if you try and tell me that “Taken” is a revenge film? That is a hill that I will in fact die on.

“Taken” is not a revenge film, and the reason it is not a revenge film is because it is not about revenge. It is about a man with a special set of skills going to extraordinary legnths to retrieve his daughter. The fact that this man with a special set of skills kills copious amounts of criminals along the way is simply a means to an end as opposed to an actual revenge, in which the killing of copious amounts of criminals is the end in and of itself.

Now the actual number of criminals killed is not what defines a revenge flick. Nor is the creativity employed in dispatching them. There are great revenge flicks in which absolutely no one dies.

The one essential, non-negotiable characteristic of the revenge flick, however, is that it include a character who makes a clear decision to seek retribution. They want payback for harm they believe has been inflicted on them or someone they care about.

This can be carried out in a spur-of-the-moment killing spree or it can be the result of years of meticulous planning. In can be violent or it can be so sneaky that the people who are on the receiving end of this retribution don’t fully realize what is happening.

The one thing it absolutely must include, however, is that moment when a character decides that someone is going to pay for what has been done.

I’ll show you you what I mean: “Man on Fire” is a 2004 movie starring Denzel Washington, (a young) Dakota Fanning, singer Marc Anthony and (briefly) Mickey Rourke.

Now let’s apply my revenge-flick test to this movie:

• Does it include a character who makes a clear-cut decision to inflict harm on a specific individual or group as payback for the harm and suffering they have previously suffered?

Yes. Quite memorably in fact.

Washington stars as John Creasy, who is a bodyguard for Pita, a young girl whose family is living in Mexico City. The girl is kidnapped, Creasy is shot, and after he gets out of the hospital, he is very clear about his intentions.

“What are you going to do?” the girl’s mother asks him.

“What I do best,” Creasy says. “I’m going to kill ‘em. Anyone that was involved, anybody that profited from it, anybody that opens their eyes at me.”

“You kill ‘em all,” repeats the mother.

Her tone is tough to decipher. It’s not a question, but it’s not an order, either. It’s more like she’s echoing, perhaps endorsing, his resolve.

Now, most often in a revenge flick, this will be followed by a cinematic montage in which the character who is now committed to retribution does one of three things:

• Inspects weapons;

• Compiles weapons;

• Conducts an inventory of implements which may be used as weapons.

Creasy does all three after telling Pita’s mother of his intentions.

OK. So now that we know we’re dealing with a revenge flick, let’s do a little bit of sorting to determine the exact species of revenge flick we have.

Are there unexpected or extreme methods of retribution?

Yes. Creasy employs duct tape in his first interrogation, using it to hold a perpetrator’s palms on the steering wheel of his car with each of his eight fingers jutting out almost like broken spokes. Creasy advises him sever a finger if he feels the perpetrator is not forthcoming and honest during the interrogation. Creasy then shows him a cigarette lighter which he says he will use to staunch the bleeding by cauterizing the wound.

Creasy ultimate cuts off two fingers and a slice of his ear before providing him with a cigarette, which he lights before shooting the man in the head. The car is then sent sailing off a cliff with the man’s body inside.

Creasy also uses a rocket launcher to blow up a car containing four corrupt cops. He then kidnaps a police officer who is something of a kingpin within the criminal element of the department. Creasy uses a plastic suppository to insert a small amount of plastic explosive in the man’s rectum. He programs his watch to send a page in 5 minutes that will cause the explosive to detonate, which is exactly what happens.

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Is there a moment in which the character who is seeking revenge must decide how far he or she is willing to go to accomplish this end?

Yes. When Creasy begins his campaign, he thinks Pita is dead, and he gives himself completely and totally over to revenge.

This is demonstrated quite compelling as Creasy prepares to use a shoulder-mounted rocket-launcher, and an older man speaks to him in Spanish, telling Creasy that the church teaches to forgive.

“Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting,” Creasy says.

Up until the movie’s climax, the closest Creasy comes to showing mercy is after he discovers that Pita’s father—played by Marc Anthony—was aware of the plan to kidnap her. Creasy gives him a gun, allowing him to shoot himself.

However, when Creasy finally captures the significant other of the man atop the kidnapping ring, he founds out that Pita is still alive. He then agrees to trade himself in exchange for her, a transaction made more palatable by the fact Creasy is already fatally wounded. He dies while being driven away after the exchange.

Creasy’s ultimate kill tally: 13.

Signature quote

“A man can be an artist. In anything, food whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.”

Rayburn, a former military associate of Creasy, played by Christopher Walken

(1 scammy company + 2 rival billionaires)/a heart-felt profanity = a billion-dollar loss

But before we get to Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn calling each other names live on CNBC, I will admit to being disappointed when I got to the end of Danzy Senna’s novel “Colored Television.”

Not because I disliked the book. On the contrary, I enjoyed it a great deal. The perspective it offered on both art and marriage resonated with me at a very deep level.

However … there is one character who does something that is absolutely and unambiguously wrong. Not criminal, but clearly unethical, and to make it worse, this character clearly benefits from the scummy behavior. I’m not going to be more specific than that because I don’t want to give away any plot points, but I wanted this character to suffer a comeuppance.

And it doesn’t happen. At least not in a direct way. Just desserts go unserved.

While I wouldn’t say the protagonist takes this with a smile, she doesn’t actively prosecute her grudge, either. She accepts what has occurred with grace and resolve.

The protagonist finds her own slice of happiness not by prevailing over the low-down, no-good charlatan who does her dirty, but by opting out of that world. She wins because she remains true to her art and her family.

I get it. And on an intellectual level, I agree with it, but on an emotional level … I had a visceral desire for that creep to get what he had coming.

I suspect this is more than just a matter of personal taste. There is a collective expectation that if you see a villain doing some villainous shit in a story, that character is probably going to get his (or hers) by the time the credits roll.

This reflects our cultural attitudes on fairness and justice. However, I believe it also speaks to a deeper tendency shared among humans: We value fairness. And while we may understand that the real world isn’t always fair, it doesn’t keep us from wanting to see justice served in fictional stories.

Thankfully, the participants in this week’s grudge match aren’t nearly as mature as Jane Gibson, the protagonist of Senna’s novel.

Principals: Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman

They are both incredibly rich men, and as rich men sometimes do, they went head-to-head in a fairly public battle of wills. Someone less sophisticated than myself might be inclined to dub this a “pissing contest.”

What was most noteworthy about this particular engagement was the amount of money that started this particular grudge: something like $4.5 million. That’s a lot to most people, but to these two? A rounding error.

The grudge that was left after the resolution, though? That wound up costing Bill $1 billion.

Explain this to me like I’m a kindergartner …

Bill and Carl spent seven years arguing over the ownership of a specific $10 bill. In 2011, their parents got together and agreed the $10 bill belonged to Bill. Then, Carl — who was several years older than Bill — called to say he was now ready to be friends with Bill. Bill offered a very profane instruction to Carl.

Several years later, Bill had gotten richer and had generally forgotten about this. Carl, however, had not. And when Bill bought a whole bunch of milkshakes, Carl saw the opportunity to stick it to Bill, and boy did he ever do that. Bill wound up having to pay a bajillion dollars for all of those milkshakes.

OK, let’s talk like adults …

In 2004, Bill Ackman sued Carl Icahn for $4.5 million. He argued that Icahn had refused to honor a provision included in a previous deal between the two.

The case dragged on for seven years. Ackman finally collected after Icahn ran out of options to appeal. Icahn wound up paying something like $10 million to cover interest and legal fees.

• Two Wall Street titans and a seven-year tiff | The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2011

After this was done, the two spoke on the phone. According to Icahn, Ackman asked to be friends. According to Ackman, it was Icahn who wanted to be friends, saying he would invest with Ackman. Ackman replied, “Forget you, Carl.”

Except he used a different F word.

The following year, Ackman publicly shorted the stock of a company called Herbalife. Ackman had a big elaborate presentation in which he stated Herbalife was a pyramid scheme. He called it a scam.

“I gave this sort of epic presentation laying out all the facts,” Ackman recalled in a 2024 interview with Lex Friedman. “Stock got completely crushed, and we were on our way.”

After dropping 20 percent that first month, the stock price not only stabilized, it rebounded. Icahn had quietly accumulated a significant amount of Herbalife stock.

“His motivations here were not really principally driven by thinking Herbalife was a good company,” Ackman said. “He thought it was a good way to hurt me.”

In other words, Icahn had a grudge.

In January 2013, both were on the phone for a live interview on CNBC. They spent nearly half an hour relitigating their previous disagreement and calling each other names. It’s truly hilarious.

Ackman said Icahn is a guy you can’t trust. Icahn said that after having dinner with Ackman, he couldn’t decide if Ackman was the most sanctimonious person he ever met or the most arrogant. Icahn on several occasions told the CNBC host he had no idea who he is.

That was the last of the public fireworks though the impasse over Herbalife dragged on.

Ultimately, Ackman said his fund lost $1 billion on the Herbalife investment while Icahn’s fund made $1 billion.

Explain this to me in business terms …

Well, that’s going to take some time. If you’re interested in the full timeline, you can click here.

So the bad guy won?

Kind of. While Icahn wound up having to fork over something like $10 million in that initial lawsuit, he made a bundle by propping up the stock price of Herbalife, which may indeed have been a pyramid scheme.

However …

It’s worth noting that Ackman’s criticism in Herbalife was rooted primarily in self interest as opposed to social reform. He saw an opportunity to make his investors a great deal of money, and any consumer protection or social good that would result from the regulation or collapse of the company was a biproduct of Ackman’s financial goal.

Honestly, Ackman is really hard to root for. He comes off like a hall monitor who’s set up a situation where his fund will profit from his tattling, and I can not deny that I found it satisfying to see him on the receiving end of a financial wedgie.

Is there a movie about this?

Yup. The documentary “Betting on Zero” was released in 2016, and it focuses on Ackman’s investment in Herbalife. I watched it on Tubi, which is free. The conflict with Icahn is explored, but it’s not the focus.

The movie does a great job of explaining the issues with Herbalife’s business model, but as hard as Ackman tries to position himself as a moral figure, he’s never quite able to do it.

So what did we learn from all that? Well, first of all, shorting stocks is a dangerous investment strategy. Secondly, you should probably be judicious about swearing at the uber rich.

During Ackman’s 2024 interview with Lex Friedman, he was asked if he had second thoughts about having done so:

Friedman: Is there any part of you that regrets saying, ‘(Forget) you,’ on that phone call to Carl Icahn?

Ackman: No. I generally have no regrets because I’m very happy with where I am now. I feel like it’s a but like you step on the butterfly in the forest and the world changes because every action has a reaction. If you’re happy with who you are, where you are in life, every decision you’ve made – good or bad – got you to precisely where you are. I wouldn’t change anything.

I see his point, but still …

Carl Icahn is a legendary figure in the financial world, considered a pioneer in what is now known as “activist investing.” He’s very rich.

Bill Ackman has become a legendary figure in the financial world. He is 30 years younger than Icahn. He is also very rich, though back in 2003, he was not nearly as rich as Icahn.

Ackman was closing down Gotham Partners, which was his first investment fund. As part of this process, he was liquidating (which means selling) his fund’s holdings in a company called Hallwood Realty.

Here’s how Ackman explained the transaction:

Ackman: “I sold it to him at a premium to where the stock was trading. I think the stock was (at) like $66, I sold it to him at $80, but it was worth about $150. And part of the deal was, Carl was like, ‘Look, I’ll give you schmuck insurance. I’ll make sure you don’t look bad.’ “

“I had another deal at a higher price without schmuck insurance, but I had a deal at Carl with a lower price with schmuck insurance. The way the schmuck insurance went, ‘Look, Bill, if I sell the stock in the next three years for a higher price, I’ll give you 50 percent of my profit.’ “

Icahn’s recollection — unsurprisingly — is quite different. Here’s how he recounted it during a live telephone interview on CNBC in 2013:

Icahn: “I was minding my own business, and in 2003 I get a call from this Ackman guy, and I’m telling you he’s like a crybaby in the schoolyard …

“He’s in my office talking about this Hallwood and how I can help him, and it’s like in the old song, you rue the day I ever met the guy.

“So he’s there and he’s talking about this company, and I actually called a friend who knew him, and the friend said, ‘Don’t deal with the guy. He’s in major, major trouble.’ …

“I will tell you – categorically – that Ackman knew he wasn’t going to get half the profits. This guy was in such trouble he was in no position to ask for anything. At the very end of the deal before we signed, he said, ‘You’ve got to do me a favor and sign something called schmuck insurance so that if you flip the stock, if you flip the stock, then I get half the profits.’ And I said to him, ‘Bill, I’m not going to flip the stock. I’m going to make a tender for it.’ And I did.

“I said, ‘And the company is going to find another buyer or I’ll buy it so you’re not going to get any profits.’ He said, ‘I realize that, I’ve just got to show my investors,’ – and he had only one or two left by that time, God knows what he had left, and he said, -- ‘I’ve got to show my investors I’m making money and all that.’

“At the end, we wrote it, and my lawyer is a great lawyer, he’s with me 20 years. He’s still with me. We wrote, and we still think what we said is right, but Ackman had got a New York court to agree that the fact they took it away from us, we never sold it, they took the stock away. We voted against the deal, and they took it against it. I was amazed what Ackman pulled, I really was, even though by that time I realized he’s the quintessential example that Wall Street, if you want a friend, get a dog, that’s what this is all about.”

Let’s go back to Ackman for his summary of the execution of the sale and what happened afterward:

Ackman: “Because I was dealing with Carl Icahn who had a reputation for being difficult, I was very focused on the agreement. And we didn’t want him to be able to be cute so the agreement said, ‘If he sells or otherwise transfers his shares …’ we came up with a definition to include every version of sale because, you know, it’s Carl.

“He then buys the stake, and makes a bid to get the company. He plans to get the company.

“Carl’s not the winning bidder. He sells his stock or he loses or transfers his shares for $145 a share. So he owes actually our investors the difference between $145 and $80, 50 percent of that.

“Lawyers never like you to put an arithmetic example. I put like a formula, you know, like out of a math book in the documents so there can be no confusion.

“So the deal closes, and he’s supposed to pay us in two business days or three business days. I waited a few business days. I call Carl.

“I’m like, ‘Carl, Congratulations on the Hallwood Realty.’

“ ‘Thanks, Bill.’

“ ‘Carl, I just want to remind you – I know it’s been a few years – remember the schmuck insurance?’

“He said, ‘Yeah.’

“ ‘You owe us our schmuck insurance.’

“He says, ‘What do you mean? I didn’t sell my shares.’

“I said, ‘Do you still have the shares?’

“He says, ‘No.’

“ ‘Well, what happened to them?’

‘Well, the company did a merger for cash, and they took away my shares, but I didn’t sell them.’

“I said, ‘Carl, I’m going to have to sue you.’

“ ‘Sue me? I’m going to sue you,’ he says.

“So I sued him, and the legal system can take some time and what he would do, we sued and we won in the whatever New York Supreme Court, and then he appealed. You can appeal like six months after the case, he waited until the 179^th day and then he would appeal. And then we fought at the next level. And he appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Of course, the Supreme Court wouldn’t take the case.

It took years. Now, as part of our agreement, we got 9 percent interest on the money he owed us. So I viewed it as my Carl Icahn money-market account with a much higher interest rate. And eventually, I won.

If you’re interested in a more neutral appraisal of the standoff, the New York Times wrote a very thorough summary of the case back in 2011:

• Two Wall Street titans and a seven-year tiff | The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2011

It’s what happened immediately after the resolution that turned out to have what a scientist might refer to as a long tail.

Here was how the two described the exchange during that live telephone interview on CNBC:

Ackman: “After the whole thing, he called me up, and he literally said, ‘Bill, we can be friends now.’ I wish we had a recording of the conversation. I said, ‘Look Carl, you are no friend of mine.’ “

Icahn: “I never said that I want to be friends with you, Bill. I wouldn’t be friends with you.”

Ackman: “OK Carl. OK Carl.”

Icahn: “You said you’d like to be friends so that we could invest together.”

Ackman: “Carl, I have no interest. You think I want to invest with you?”

Icahn: “I wouldn’t invest with you if you were the last man on earth.”

It is a truly hilarious exchange that demonstrates that there is no amount of money that will immunize you from reverting to grade-school tactics in an argument.

These were two billionaires arguing on live television about who wanted to be friends.

Recently, Ackman has offered a bit more clarity on precisely what he contends he said during that post-lawsuit phone call. This is from the 2024 interview with Friedman:

Ackman: “Eventually we won, and eventually he paid, and then he called me. And he said, ‘Bill, congratulations. Now we can be friends. We can do some investing together.’ “

“I’m like, ‘Carl, fuck you.’ “

In the interview, Ackman exaggeratedly mouthed the F-word while whispering the expletive. Friedman then asked him to clarify it:

Q: You actually said ‘Fuck you,’?

Ackman: “Yes. Now, I’m not that kind of person generally, but you know, he made eight years to pay me – not even me, my investors, money they owed. So yeah.

“He probably didn’t like that. So he kind of hung around in the weeds, waiting for an opportunity.”

After closing down Gotham Partners, Ackman started a new investment fund called Pershing Square. It started in 2004 and had a major upward trajectory.

In 2011, Ackman began to hint publicly that his company had staked out a major short position in a company that he referred to as a scam. While he wouldn’t reveal the company, he stated that the country would be better off after the company collapsed.

So what is a short position? It is betting against a company’s stock price. Here’s an analogy that Ackman has used that I found instructive:

Ackman: “It’s a bit like you think silver coins are going to go down in value.

“And you have a friend who has a whole pile of these 1880 silver U.S. dollars, and you think they’re going to go down in value. You say, ‘Hey, can I borrow like 10 of those dollars from you?’

“He’s like, ‘Sure, but what are you going to pay me to borrow ‘em?’

“ ‘Well, I’ll pay you interest on the value of the dollars today.’

“So you borrow the dollars that are worth $100 each today. You pay him interest while you’re borrowing them, and then you go sell them on the market for $100. That’s what they’re worth. Then they go down in price to $50. You go back in, you buy the silver dollars back at $50, and you give them back to your friend.

“Your friend is fine. You borrow 10, you gave him the 10 back, and he got interest in the meantime. He’s happy. He made money on his collection.

“You, however, you made $50 times the 10 coins. You made $500. That’s pretty good.

“The problem with that is what if you sell them and they go from $100 to $1,000? Now, you’re going to have to go buy them back, and you’ve got to pay $10,000 to buy back coins that you sold for $1,000. You’re going to lose $9,000. And there’s no limit on how high a stock price can go.”

The company that Ackman’s fund shorted was Herbalife. It is a multi-level marketing company that sells weight-loss shakes direct to consumers. It also sells the opportunity to sell those shakes yourself as well as convince others to sell them, which will earn you a share of their sales.

“It’s a great meal and a great business,” or at least that’s the pitch. A financial reporter Ackman had known is the one who first pointed out the potential that Herbalife was a pyramid scheme.

Ackman: “The more work I did on the company, the more I was like, ‘Oh my God, this thing is an incredible scam.’ They purport to sell weight-loss shakes, but in reality they’re selling a fake business plan. The people that adopt it lose money, and they go after poor people. They go after – actually in many cases – undocumented immigrants.”

In 2012, Ackman made his fund’s short position public, explaining in detail why he thought the company’s stock would collapse.

Why make this public? Well, he wanted to generate attention of both investors and government regulators. If people lost confidence in the company or the government began investigating and potentially taking action, it would cause the stock price to drop, which is exactly what Ackman’s investment company needed to happen in order to profit.

Ackman: “I gave this sort of epic presentation laying out all the facts. Stock got completely crushed, and we were on our way. And the government actually got interested early on, launched an investigation pretty early. SEC and otherwise.”

This is the point when Icahn entered the Herbalife saga. He began to buy up Herbalife stock as well, and at one point he held an estimated 16 percent of the company’s stock.

Ackman: “His motivations here were not really principally driven by thinking Herbalife was a good company. He thought it was a good way to hurt me so he basically bought a bunch of stock and said it was a really great company.”

While Ackman was banking on the stock price going down, Icahn was going long. He wanted the value to go up. This would accomplish two things. It would increase the value of his holdings, and it would put Ackman’s fund in incredible danger.

Ackman: “He sees an opportunity, and he buys the stock. He figures he’s going to run me off the road.”

Remember, Ackman’s fund isn’t holding Herbalife stock. It has sold its shares, which were effectively “borrowed.” He will have to repurchase these shares at a future date.

The lower the stock price goes, the more money he is in position to make.

If the stock price remains the same, his firm would lose only the interest it paid to borrow the shares.

If the stock price goes up, though? Ackman’s firm is going to lose money buying them back.

Icahn had a vested interest in increasing the stock price.

Ackman: “What he did is he got on the board of the company, and used the company’s financial resources plus his stake in the business to squeeze us. And a squeeze – in short selling – is where you restrict the supply of the securities so that there’s a scarcity and then you encourage people to buy the stock, and you drive the stock up, and as I explained before – you short those coins at $10 and they go to $100, you can lose theoretically an unlimited amount of money and that’s scary. That’s why we don’t short stocks. That’s why I didn’t short stocks before this, but unfortunately I had to have the personal lesson.”

There was a documentary made about this particular investment: “Betting on Zero.” It was released in 2016, and while it looked at the story from Ackman’s perspective as an investor, the filmmaker also found a group of former Herbalife proprietors in Chicago who had felt burned by their involvement in the company.

In some ways, the film validates Ackman’s position. There were some very scammy things about the company.

However, the film also dramatically illustrates how Ackman’s attempts to point this out failed to impact the price of Herbalife stock in the way he hoped. The most dramatic example of this came as he prepared for a public presentation in 2014 which he promised would be the final nail in Herbalife’s coffin:

In preparing for potential questions, Ackman is asked by a public-relations strategist how he would respond if the stock goes up during the presentation and Ackman is then asked about this fact.

Ackman: “It’s irrelevant. It’s not going up, though, OK? The question is whether it opens again.”

Joe Silvan, PR strategist: “What can we come up with other than irrelevant?”

Ackman: “Stock’s not going up. It’s a certainty. Stock’s irrelevant if it’s not going up.”

Well, the stock did in fact go up during the presentation. And Ackman was asked about it:

Q: Since you haven’t looked at the stock price. I’ll tell you it’s up about 13 percent, bouncing around.

Ackman: “Herbalife is going to use the fact that the stock price is up today to say that everyone’s ignoring whatever we have to say. My advice is you probably shouldn’t ignore it. Next.”

There was an investigation into Herbalife. The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with the company, which paid $220 million in fines.

Ackman has said that he subsequently spoke to a professor at UC-Berkeley who’d been hired by the government as part of that investigation.

Ackman: “He got access to all their data, was able to prove that they were a pyramid scheme, but the government ultimately settled with Carl because they were afraid they could possibly lose in court. So they settled with him. But if you look at the stock, if we had been able to stay short the entire time, we would have made a bunch of money. The stock had a $6 billion market cap when we shorted it. Today, it’s probably $1 billion or a billion and a half.”

Ackman closed out his fund’s position in Herbalife in 2018, however. It wasn’t until 2024 when the stock price actually tumbled.

Ackman has pegged the losses his fun suffered at $1 billion and estimates that Icahn gained a commensurate amount.

Q: So how much for him was personal as part of the game of investing.

Ackman: “Well, he thought he could make money doing this. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise. He thought his bully pulpit, his ability to create a short squeeze, his control over the company, would enable him to achieve this, and he made a billion, we lost a billion.”

Q: So you think it was a financial decision not a personal?

Ackman: “It was a personal decision to pursue it, but he was waiting for an opportunity to make money at our expense, and it was kind of a brilliant opportunity for him.

Q: Is there any part of you that regrets saying, ‘Fuck you,’ on that phone call to Carl Icahn?

Ackman: No. I generally have no regrets because I’m very happy with where I am now. I feel like it’s a but like you step on the butterfly in the forest and the world changes because every action has a reaction. If you’re happy with who you are, where you are in life, every decision you’ve made – good or bad – got you to precisely where you are. I wouldn’t change anything.

Of course the 300-pound offensive lineman I was talking to didn’t use those words exactly.

He told me he used to imagine that the guy he was supposed to block had done terrible, terrible things to a family member and/or significant other. I remember him appearing almost sheepish about this. As if he were confessing that he had once ate a half gallon of ice cream in a single sitting, and he then said he no longer resorted to visualizing such extreme scenarios. He just imagined the opponent was coming into his house to steal something.

In the 30 years since, I’ve never encountered another athlete who had described using this particular tactic. However, I’ve had plenty of guys bring up a perceived slight, an actual rivalry or simply the desire to “prove everyone wrong” as something that motivated their performance.

They don’t just harbor grudges, they use them and occasionally create them out of thin air.

I was reminded of this when I read a piece that was published in the Opinion section of the New York Times last weekend:

• Why you need a nemesis

  By Rachel Feintzeig, New York Times

It is a very fun piece, and it points to a fact that is often ignored: Grudges can be useful.

They focus your energy and your attention on a specific task. This can be anything from blocking a 300-pound football player you’ve decided is trying to rob you to proving a very specific critic wrong and winning a game that individual had predicted you would lose.

Michael Jordan’s willingness to employ this tactic became such a recurrent theme in the multi-part documentary that it was more like a running joke.

Here is an incomplete list of people against whom Jordan waged some sort of petty vendetta:

• George Karl for not acknowledging him at a restaurant during the 1996 NBA Finals

• Labradford Smith scored a career-high 37 points against Jordan’s Bulls, and then — according to Jordan — had the temerity to say, “Nice game, Mike.” The two teams played again the next night, and Jordan vowed to match Smith’s 37 points in the first half. He came close, scoring 36 and finishing with 47. Turns out Smith never said, “Nice game, Mike” after the first encounter. Jordan made it up.

• Toni Kukoc for being an object of the affection of Jerry Krause, the GM of Jordan’s team

• Clyde Drexler because some people compared him to Jordan

Here’s a great mashup of all the instances in which Jordan admitted to taking something personal in the multi-part series, “The Last Dance” which I absolutely love.

I covered the Seahawks when Richard Sherman played there from 2011 to 2017, and he was very much the same way. He harbored some very deep-rooted hostility against Jim Harbaugh, who’d been his head coach in college at Stanford. He regularly minimized the talents of some of receivers he faced like A.J. Green and Roddy White. In one particularly comical bit, he changed his Twitter handle to Optimus Prime prior to a game against the Detroit Lions, whose top wide receiver -- Calvin Johnson – was nicknamed Megatron.

I asked Sherman about this tendency to be in conflict with opponents, and he said that whenever he’d eliminated this tension – often at the behest of coaches – he had not played as well.

Now I’m not sure whether Sherman nurtured these grudges because of the motivational fodder he believed they provided or he was a guy who naturally found himself in conflict and this tendency just so happened to confer a motivational benefit.

What I do know is that it absolutely worked for Sherman as it clearly did for Jordan. I think of them as Grudge Monsters in that they are attuned to even the slightest hint of disapproval, which they might be able to use to fuel their performance.

Is there a downside to this?

I’ve certainly seen some evidence of that.

First, the grudge monster tends to be epically sensitive and ready to take the most dramatic and hostile interpretation of anything that is said about them.

Second, I’ve found that people who always seem to be in conflict have a hard time maintaining long-term relationships even with those people who are close to them.

A few months ago, I started wondering whether there was an inherent issue with using grudges or resentment for motivation. I went so far as to develop an analogy: Maybe it was like burning coal or a fossil fuel, and that while it may provide the power you’re looking for, it also produces some emotional pollution. Resentment may be a renewable resource, but it isn’t exactly clean.

I reached out to a couple of sports psychologists to test my little hypothesis. Turns out it wasn’t just my metaphor that was a little clunky.

Brett McCabe didn’t say anything wrong, per se, with using a grudge to fuel performance.

In fact, he said, “it can provide a good kick in the butt.”

The sheer number of athletes and coaches who say they were motivated to prove the doubters wrong is testament to this. The caution McCabe offered was if you sought more than just motivation.

If hoping your resentment-fueled victory will provide a sense of validation or self-worth, well, that can lead to problems. How you feel about yourself — your sense of self-worth — becomes tied to the outcome, and there are tons of reasons that you might wind up losing that don’t have all that much to do with your worth as either a person or a competitor.

But even if you win, the satisfaction that comes from that is unlikely to be as lasting as we think, which means the validation that we (think) comes from that will be fleeting, too.

A grudge can be a good means to get to an end, but if it’s the goal, you risk seeing everything as a zero-sum game.

"Say Drake," he said.

It was the latest — and potentially the last — salvo in an ongoing grudge between two of the world’s most popular entertainers.

This sort of thing is not new to hip-hop. Rap beef occupies its own little corner of the genre, situated somewhere between professional competition and commercial bloodsport.

Now I am someone who has always disliked Drake, and I have also repeatedly daydreamed about ways that I could get back at people I believe to have wronged me, which means that felt downright gleeful while watching Kendrick Lamar perform.

This week, however, I’ve found myself wondering how Kendrick feels now. I’ll explain why in just a bit, but first a few grudge-related links.

The Grudge Report

• Grudge fuels Jamal Murray’s career-high 55 points

  Resentment is a well of motivation that is both potent and deep for athletes. Michael Jordan dipped into it constantly over the course of his career. Jamal Murray — a guard for the Denver Nuggets — is just dabbling as he took the frustration he felt after being ejected from a game against Portland to come back and score a career-high 55 points against the Blazers when the two teams played two days later.

• The feud between Sam Altman and Elon Musk

  By Jai Hamid, MSN

  There are some very hard feelings between two of the more powerful technocrats on the planet. The fact that Sam Altman and Elon Musk were co-founders of OpenAI is part of the back story that has heightened the stakes, and when Altman stood next to Donald Trump to announce the $500 billion initiative called Stargate, well, the world’s richest man immediately started fuming.

• Ghosting by the goose leads to ghosting by the gander

  New York Times Magazine

  This is going to stretch the bounds of what we typically think of as a grudge … however … I think it qualifies. The New York Times Magazine talked to 10 people who had “ghosted” romantic interests (i.e. just stopped communicating without providing any notice or explanation). This one struck me as particularly interesting:

  

OK, now where was I?

Oh yeah, this guy staring straight into the camera during the halftime show at the Super Bowl and saying, “Say Drake …”

Kendrick Lamar then proceeded to say that Drake was reputed to be interested in young women. For this reason, Kendrick said, Drake should hope he’s never incarcerated. Kendrick than advised any woman who might have a romantic interest in Drake that she should take steps to cut off Drake’s access to any younger sisters they might have.

“Not Like Us” becomes less subtle as the song progresses. More catchy, too.

It is what rappers call a diss track. That is, it’s a song created to belittle someone who has been identified as not just a rival, but an enemy or “opp” if you prefer the current hip-hop vernacular.

In other words, Kendrick Lamar has a grudge against Drake and vice versa. And in hip-hop, grudges are not only tolerated, but encouraged and even rewarded.

What makes the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake unique is not the intensity of the conflict so much as how unambiguously Kendrick won. That song calling Drake a pedophile won five Grammys, which matches the number Drake has won in his entire catalog. Taylor Swift danced to “Not Like Us” during the awards show.

Puzzlingly, Drake has taken steps that have made things worse for himself. He sued his own record label over the song, and then watched as Kendrick turned around and used that to tease his performance of that song during halftime of the freaking Super Bowl. And if that wasn't enough, he brought out the best women's tennis player of all-time -- who had reportedly dated Drake at some point in the past -- to dance as part of the show.

If you want a specific timeline of the beef, you can find that here.

What I’m most interested is what happens now.

Is it “Game Over” as the show itself indicated, lights in the crowd spelling out that message at the end of his performance? Has Kendrick crossed Drake's name off his shit list? Or does K-Dot perhaps switch to surveillance, pausing his verbal annihilation provided Drake offers no further provocation?

I guess more specifically, I’m wondering if Kendrick Lamar’s prosecution of this particular grudge has eliminated or at least diminished the negative feelings that he held toward Drake when the conflict began.

This gets to what is so very tricky about grudges.

1. What is it -- specifically -- that we believe we want?

2. How will we feel if and when we get it?

What is the result of “winning” a grudge? Not in terms of popular opinion or even validation. I’m talking about how you actually feel about yourself and the person you’ve been beefing with.

Has Kendrick Lamar experienced some type of catharsis?

Essentially, I’m trying to apply a very modern example to something that the psychologist Karen Gorney wrote about way back in 1948 in her paper titled, “The Value of Vindictiveness.”

Is Kendrick Lamar Person A, who chose to respond to Drake’s provocations and has – through his lyrical evisceration – let off the psychological steam that he was feeling?

Or has this feud tapped into something that is more indicative of Person B?

The closest I've ever come to winning a grudge was when the host at a rival radio station apologized for insulting my wife online and turning my reaction to this insult into content for his radio show. He delivered this apology in front of an audience. We were both watching the Seahawks practice. There were a number of fellow media members around us, including several of my co-workers. He said he was wrong, and extended his hand. He had previously apologized to my wife on Twitter, which was where he had posted the initial insult.

I shook his hand, but I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it. All I said was, “OK.” I didn't feel relieved. I didn't feel satisfied. If anything, I felt a little more resentful. Like he was more concerned with how other people felt about him apologizing than he was about me.

What did I want?

I’ve thought this a lot about this over the past 5 years, and I’ve concluded that what I really wanted was to remain mad. To fully accept his apology would require me to give up the idea that I would have some sort of final say in the dispute. I would have to give up my chance to get back at him. I wasn’t quite ready to do that.

I got there, though. It just took me a couple more years.

I needed to realize that my anger had become an end toward itself. I was much more like Person B than Person A, and the person it was hurting most was me.

I am a little embarrassed about how long it took me to fully accept his apology, but I’ve subsequently appeared on his radio show. This summer, I saw him at a wedding of a mutual friend. We even posed for a picture together.

My point here is that the resolution of this particular grudge wound up having very little to do with the person I was mad at and much more to do with the way I processed anger or more accurately, failed to process it.

I realize this makes it sound like I'm judging Kendrick Lamar, and that's not the case.

I've never liked Drake's music. I've never liked Drake's persona. I feel he’s the worst kind of millennial in that he has a tendency to pick fights with little off-the-cuff remarks -- what rappers refer to as subliminal disses -- and then, when he gets lyrically smacked in the nose by someone who doesn’t want to play his little reindeer games, he sticks out his lower lip like a whiny baby and literally calls his lawyer.

I howled on Sunday as Kendrick Lamar began to perform “Not Like Us” last week, and my excitement went up an octave when I saw Serena Williams was dancing on the stage.

From a purely psychological perspective, though, I really wonder what it feels like to settle a grudge in that dramatic of a fashion. Was it as satisfying as Kendrick Lamar thought or hoped it would be?

❝

It’s been suggested to me that maybe therapy would help so I could let some of this anger go. I’m not ready to. It’s my anger, and I’m gonna hold onto it.

Now, I’ve never been particularly resistant toward therapy, but those final two sentences sound like something I absolutely would have said five years ago if someone suggested I let go of the anger I held toward my stepfather. 

It was jarring to see this shadow of my past self in those words, and that’s because of who said them: Micki Witthoeft, who is the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police after entering the White House on January 6, 2021.

In the three years since this happened, Babbitt has become a martyr in a certain corner of our nation’s political landscape. Her mother, who was fairly apolitical prior to her daughter’s death, has moved to Washington D.C. and become a fairly prominent figure within this corner, standing in opposition to the current government in general and Democratic Party in particular. She’s known as Mamma Micki.

I’m not going to spend a ton of time explaining Witthoeft’s story nor judging the merits of her claims. If you want to dig more into that, I highly encourage you to read “The Insurrectionists Next Door” and even seek out the podcast “You Won’t Believe Who Our Neighbors Are.” I will say that while I feel very badly for the obvious and understandable pain Micki Witthoeft has experienced after the loss of her daughter, I feel her current course of action is misguided and not rooted in fact.

The reason I’m writing about this is because after reading her quote, and being struck by how similar her feelings were to sentiments I’ve had, I began to wonder if the merits of a grudge – i.e. whether it’s justified or not -- have all that much to do with the effect they have upon the person carrying them.

More specifically: Does having a grudge that is considered warranted and understandable have the same sort of corrosive and harmful effects as a grudge that is considered to be rooted in fallacy or even a conspiracy?

When I hear about an instance of resentment in general or a grudge in particular, my first impulse is to find out the underlying cause.

I do this so I can assess whether I think it’s valid or not.

Essentially, I sort them into “good” and “bad” grudges. This sorting is conducted on their underlying justification.

By “good” grudge, I mean one I believe to be warranted, maybe even appropriate, given the circumstances.

For instance:

• My stepfather was a hard-ass who demanded perfection from me as a teenager, sucked up resources from my family and turned out to be dishonest and deceitful and never had the decency to apologize. It’s my right to hold a grudge. It’s my anger and I’m gonna hold onto it. 

A “bad” grudge is one in which the anger is either disconnected from or out of proportion to what actually occurred. It may grow from a misunderstanding or an exaggeration or perhaps even a crazy-assed conspiracy theory, and consequently the actions that flow from this hostility will be misguided or inappropriate. A “bad” grudge is one you should let go of.

The question of whether a judge is “good” or “bad” depends entirely upon perspective, though.

I’m going to guess that Mamma Micki absolutely believes her grudge to be a “good” one. I’ve also talked to people – including one teacher in a writing class – who was fairly unsympathetic and even critical of the animosity I harbored toward my stepfather. She absolutely considered my grudge to be “bad.”

This is part of the reason people tend to spend so much time explaining the context of their resentment. They want others to see the underlying reason. To recognize — and thereby validate — the reasons for holding a grudge.

But what if we took the value judgment out of it? Instead of trying to judge whether the grudge itself is justified or warranted, we just accept it as an incident one that has caused pain. Harm has occurred.

My stepfather – whom I did not really like after the first year of his marriage to my mom – turned out to be fairly first-rate scoundrel. This made me very angry.

A daughter – whose mother clearly loved her – is killed during a politicized mobilization. This made her both incredibly sad and very angry.

The result is pronounced emotional pain.

The shape and temperature of this pain is going to depend on our own unique histories, though. Both in life in general and toward that person in particular. We all have our sensitive spots, our vulnerabilities and our regrets, which will influence the emotions we experience following a painful event.

But pain is pain, and the question of whether it’s justified or warranted or rational doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s a feeling. We are having a powerful emotional experience to something that has occurred. We are hurting.

The question is what we do with it.

Are we going to act on this pain or are we going to hold onto it? 

Of course, there are many different increments in between these poles. Acting on it can mean talking through your feelings in the protected space of a therapy session. It can also mean declaring “Capitol Police suck ass!” to television cameras after being arrested for blocking traffic on the two-year anniversary of her daughter’s death just as Mamma Micki did.

Holding onto it can mean sitting with that feeling until it becomes less potent, more manageable, or it can mean bottling it up and stashing it in the dark corner of your psyche, allowing it to ferment along with any other resentments that accrue over time. This was an absolute first-rate specialty of mine.

The justification for a grudge affects how we see our anger and how others judge it, but I’m not sure it affects the intensity with which we experience it or what it does to us when we carry it around for years and years.

Actually, I’m understating that. I don’t believe the justification for a grudge determines its effect on the person who holds that grudge. Having a “good” grudge can cause problems in the exact same way that a “bad” grudge can.

In the years after my Mom divorced my stepfather, I would fantasize about all the ways I might confront him over what he’d done.

I would imagine writing a story spelling out what had happened in his term as a public-school superintendent in San Jose, showing just what led to his ultimate resignation. Or maybe I’d go deeper, more personal and explain exactly why my mom felt that he had been not only unfaithful, but dishonest about it.

 Did this make the pain I felt any less pronounced or more manageable?

No. It absolutely did not. In fact, it’s quite possible — perhaps even likely — that I got MORE angry as time went on.

The fact I believed my anger was warranted, maybe even appropriate, didn’t make it any less harmful. It just added a layer of righteousness to my view of the situation. I thought I deserved to be angry given what had happened.

To quote Snoop from Season 4 of “The Wire”: Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

Things happen to us in this life. Things that hurt, and when this happens the challenge is to figure out how to deal with them, ideally without adding to or compounding the pain that we feel.

That last part is what makes grudges so tricky especially when we feel like we’re right. We end up doing things that increase our suffering, and this can happen regardless of whether that grudge is considered justified.

In fact, believing the grudge against my stepfather was justified made it MORE difficult for me to let go of it in part because I felt that letting go – without him ever acknowledging let alone apologizing for what happened – would be letting him get away with it.

I’ve stopped asking whether I was right or wrong to be angry with my stepfather.

It is simply a fact: I was angry.

Carrying this anger, however, was not helping me in any way. In fact, it was the one thing that was keeping me tied to my stepfather.

I had a choice: I could act on this anger and see if that helped dilute the potency. Or I could work with my therapist to process it. That latter path is the one I chose.

It was — going back to that quote from the story in The Atlantic — my anger, and I finally decided to dispose of it.

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In fact, what ends up triggering the anger is often significantly downwind from what prompted the hard feelings in the first place.

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To put it in a doctor’s terminology, there is a pronounced tendency to fixate on the symptoms as opposed to addressing the underlying condition when treating a grudge.

Here, I’ve got a good example involving someone whose life is close to being the complete and total opposite of mine. He’s 6 foot 5, Black and a former professional athlete who grew up in Memphis. I’m the guy who wasn’t even 5 feet tall at age 15, I’m white and I grew up in the feral half of Oregon.

There is one way, however, in which I feel like a kindred spirit to Michael Oher: He’s got a grudge.

This is certainly not the ending of either the best-selling book nor the award-winning movie that purported to tell his story.

In fact, that movie seems to be one of the things that has led Oher to feel that he has been wronged by the Memphis family that took him in back when he was in high school.

Oher is now suing that family, which is very sad on several levels, but mostly because this seemed to be a story that everyone could feel good about.

Oher, who grew up poor in Tennessee, had become eligible to play college football where he was such a force of nature on the football field that he went on to make millions of dollars in the NFL.

The Tuohys, a white, well-off family in Memphis, who had taken Oher in, providing with a home, use of a truck and tutoring. Their generosity had opened doors for Oher that might have stayed shut.

Sandra Bullock even won an Oscar when it was all said and done.

But as with many stories involving race in America — especially those that come to generate millions of dollars — it wound up getting a lot more complicated.

The backstory

Oher grew up in Memphis as one of his mother’s 11 children. She suffered from issues of substance abuse. He attended a variety of schools and was at times unhoused before coming to Briarcrest Christian where he became one of the top football prospects in the state of Tennessee.

At some point in Oher’s final two years of high school, he came to live with Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, whose daughter attended the same school as Michael. They also had a younger son. They not only took Oher in, but helped him make up the ground academically to become eligible to accept a college scholarship to play football. He went to Ole Miss, which is where the Tuohys had both attended.

Even now, Oher looks back very fondly at his time with the Tuohys:

“Honestly, it was great. I had a bed to stay on. I was eating good. They got me a truck.”

Michael Oher in New York Times Magazine, Aug. 18, 2024

That quote is included in a profile of Oher published in the New York Times Magazine earlier this month.

At some point during Oher’s time living with the Tuohys, one of the country’s most prominent non-fiction authors became interested in this story.

The author is Michael Lewis, whose previous book — “Moneyball” — detailed how the Oakland A’s and their general manager Billy Beane hacked baseball. The book changed the way people not only judged the performance of baseball players, but provided a framework for identifying things that were undervalued in a marketplace.

Michael Lewis is a childhood friend of Sean Tuohy, the two having attended a private school together while growing up in New Orleans.

Lewid decided to write a book, which is essentially wove together two stories:

1. How important left tackles had become to modern professional football, and therefore how lucrative the position had become;

2. How Oher possessed the rare physical gifts required of these ultra-valuable left tackles, but after growing up very poor in Memphis, he very nearly fell through the cracks and would not have been eligible to play college football let alone the NFL were it not for the help of the Tuohys.

The book was published in 2006 when Oher was in his second year at Ole Miss. I was covering the NFL when the book was published. In fact, while I was at The Seattle Times, I hosted a Live Chat in which Lewis answered reader questions about the book.

I also spoke with Oher back in 2009 when he was preparing for the draft. Well, me and a couple of hundred other reporters who had flown to Indianapolis to see the top 250 or so college football players audition for NFL teams.

One of the things the aspiring pro football players must do at what is honestly a meat market is subject themselves to questions from the assembled press. When he was asked about the book, Oher said he had not read it. I thought this was odd, but also somewhat understandable as players routinely insist they do not read the accounts and descriptions that reporters offer of their performance. Here’s the story I wrote for The Seattle Times.

Oher was chosen in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft, the No. 23 pick overall. He was the fourth offensive tackle chosen in that year’s draft.

The movie version of “The Blind Side” was released in November 2009, which was in the middle of Oher’s first season in the NFL. The movie turned out to be much more of a commercial success than the book. The film’s budget has been pegged at being just shy of $30 million, the gross receipts more than $300 million. Bullock, who played Leigh Anne Tuohy, won an Oscar for Best Actress. Country star Tim McGraw played Sean Tuohy.

Oher had a very good, but not great NFL career. He played for eight years, which is more than double the length of the average player’s career and longer than two of the three offensive tackles who were drafted ahead of Oher.

As a member of the 2012 Ravens team, he won a Super Bowl ring. However, he was never was chosen for the Pro Bowl, meaning he was never seen as being one of the five or six best players at his position. Oher retired in 2016, having earned more than $30 million in his career. 

By then, Oher had come to see the year he spent with the Tuohys and everything that followed much differently.

The friction

Oher feels the movie portrayed him as being unintelligent. He believes this portrayal influenced not just the way NFL teams saw him, but the way people see him now. 

Having seen the film, I understand why he would feel that way. His character doesn’t say all that much in the movie. He stands around, looks very big and does what he’s told. There’s also a scene where Tuohy’s son – who is purportedly 10 at the time -- uses condiment bottles to explain football to Oher. This is absurd given that Oher was named to the Memphis paper’s All-Metro football team when he was a junior, which is before he moved in with the Tuohys.

The movie is — unambiguously — a story about Oher’s white saviors, whose generosity and determination paved the way for a young Black man who was enormous physically, gifted athletically, but otherwise entirely passive in this journey from poverty to wealth.

None of this is necessarily the Tuohy’s fault, though. They didn’t make the movie nor did they write the book it was based upon. Hollywood is known to take some liberties.

This is where it gets complicated, though. The book, remember, was written by Sean’s childhood friend (and I would argue that out of everyone in this story, Lewis’s shortcomings are the easiest to explicitly spell out. In fact, why don’t I just go ahead and do that:

Michael Lewis is kind of a dick

The author of "The Blind Side" is surprisingly ignorant about the book's subject.

https://www.grudgery.com/p/grudgery-blindside-michael-lewis

The recent New York Times Magazine story also pointed out something I didn’t know: The movie was produced by Alcon Entertainment, whose primary shareholder is a man named Fred Smith. Fred Smith is the founder of Fed Ex. He — like the Tuohys — lives in Memphis. His son, Cannon, married the Tuohy’s daughter, Collins.

You can start to see why Oher might start to have some hard feelings about why the story was told the way it was.

Bullock spent time around Leigh Anne Tuohy so she could get a sense for who she was portraying; Oher didn’t meet the actor who played him until after the movie was shot. In fact, the actor said it was suggested that meeting Oher might be counterproductive given how much he’d changed since he was the high-schooler living with the Tuohys.

 In retrospect, when Oher said he hadn’t read “The Blind Side” back at the scouting combine in 2009, it was a sign he didn’t see it as being truly his story. This feeling was compounded significantly by the way he was portrayed in the movie that came out later that year.

The lawsuit

Last year, when Oher filed a lawsuit against the Tuohys, he requested the following:

• An end to the conservatorship that was established when he was 18;

• Money Oher believes he should have earned from the film and a thorough accounting of the proceeds;

• An injunction to prevent Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy from using his name, image and likeness.

The suit also points out that the family claimed repeatedly to have adopted Oher, both privately and publicly, which was not in fact the case. The suit also states the Tuohys raised $8 million using Oher’s name, image and likeness, claiming to have adopted him, when they did not in fact do that.

The Tuohys have said Oher has sent them threatening text messages that amount to extortion.

The case – which was filed in Tennessee – has a hearing scheduled for Oct. 1.

The legal fight

The conservatorship has already been ended by the court, the Tuohys stating in a court filing it was only created to avoid any questions regarding Oher’s eligibility to play NCAA football. They stated the conservatorship was never used to influence or limit any of Oher’s decisions.

In a court filing, the Tuohys said Oher was paid $138,000 from the movie, disputing his allegation that he didn’t receive his share of the proceeds of the movie. The producers of the film have also disclosed what they say are the financial disbursements.

Then there’s the issue of a formal adoption. Sean Tuohy initially said that Oher was too old to be formally adopted, having already turned 18. In Tennessee, however, like more than 20 states, you can formally adopt someone who is legally an adult. The Tuohys have said in court filings that while they referred to Oher as their adopted son, they meant it in a colloquial sense rather than a strictly legal one.

I possess neither the first-hand knowledge of this situation nor the legal expertise to provide any meaningful assessment on what could or should happen in court.

Honestly, I’m not really interested in the outcome of the lawsuit except for how it relates to the grudge that Oher holds.

I can absolutely understand why Oher is angry. His story was told in pretty much the most dramatic fashion possible in a way he feels minimized him and glorified the Tuohys. He believes this portrayal had a negative impact on his career and has been an unambiguous positive for them.

As the lawsuit makes clear, he feels that the family called him his son, but didn’t really mean it.

I’m not sure the lawsuit will provide a remedy for any of that, though, given that it’s mostly about accounting, contracts and which specific method was used to incorporate Oher into the family.

Remember how I started this newsletter? The thing that we end up fighting over is not necessarily what caused our grudge. I think that very much applies here.

While Oher may be unhappy, maybe even angry about the financial payouts from the film and the legal agreement tying him to the Tuohys, the grudge is about something much deeper and it sure seems Oher is trying to find a way to achieve some closure.

I suppose it’s possible the lawsuit could be a path toward that.

Perhaps a judgment or even a settlement could ease Oher’s anger and bitterness over how it played out.

Maybe the act of filing the lawsuit — and the opportunity that provides him to tell his side of the story — makes him feel heard and seen. The fact he agreed to the magazine profile shows he is interested in sharing what he believes occurred. 

However, it’s also possible that the anger and resentment he feels will continue to boil even after the court case is resolved. This might be true even if Oher technically wins. After all, you can’t undo the movie any more than you can pound out the impression it made on people.

If he loses, well, it will probably only compound the sense of grievance he feels.

Then again, what else can he do?

It’s tempting to just say he should move on because dwelling in the past will only make you more miserable. After all, Oher is in his 30s now with a wife and five children. He told the New York Times he’s secure financially, he has money saved.

There are some people who would even describe it as irrational to keep focusing on the past. After all, it’s not going to do him any good. However, this is a view that reflects a classical economist’s understanding of human nature, which holds that humans will generally do what is most beneficial to them. If we fail to do this, it’s a reflection of a flaw in our decision-making or (worse) our personality.

This is not true, however. We constantly choose things we know are not in our own best self-interest whether it’s wolfing down sugary snacks or vegging out on reality television.

And sometimes, we’ll sit and stew over an injustice that occurred many years ago inflicted by someone we no longer associate with. As much as we’d prefer to stop ruminating over this, we can’t seem to help it.

What do we do then? Well, perhaps you spend years imaginging a confrontation in which you finally tell that person what you think like I did with my stepfather. Or maybe you file a lawsuit that will provide some concrete way to address your grievances.

Honestly, I’m hoping that however that lawsuit turns out, it helps Oher find some closure. I’m doubtful, however, and I say that based on my own personal experience. Closure was something I had to find within myself.

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Some of that is because I’m a journalist, which means I’m familiar with the techniques and standards of writing contemporary non-fiction.

Some of that is because Lewis’s own words — both on the page and spoken aloud — reveal a transparent lack of regard for Oher’s capabilities both in his intellect and his understanding of the game of football.

In Michael Sokolove’s recent profile of Michael Oher in the New York Times Magazine, he points out that some passages of “The Blind Side” now “read as off-key”:

In characterizing Oher’s otherness at the wealthy and almost all-white Briarcrest school, Lewis describes him, variously, as “this huge Black kid” and “as lost as a Martian stumbling out of a crash landing.” His mother, Denise Oher, is “very large and very Black,” and in a brief meeting with her son Michael and Leigh Anne, she slurs her words and wears a “muumuu and a garish wig.” Sean Tuohy, who pitched in as an assistant football coach at Briarcrest, is credited by Lewis with a magical ability to instill confidence in teenage boys. He was said to reach out especially to the school’s few Black athletes. “I married a man who doesn’t know his own color,” he quotes Leigh Anne as saying.

After Oher learns that his father is dead — apparently having been thrown off a highway overpass — Leigh Anne tells him it might be for the best. “You didn’t know the man,” she says in Lewis’s book, and “one way or anotehr, you are going to have money, and you know that he would have found you and made claims upon you.”

New York Times Magazine, “The ‘Blind Side’ made him famous, but he has a different story to tell,” Aug. 18. 2024

Remember, Lewis and Sean Tuohy knew each other from childhood, having attended the same private school in New Orleans.

The fact that Leigh Anne is quoted to contextualize the death of Michael Oher’s father is pretty revealing about just how little Lewis took the young man’s feelings into consideration.

There’s one issue of fact-finding that is even more jarring. In the book, Lewis quotes Leigh Anne Tuohy as stating that Oher was staying with a family in a trailer when she insisted that Michael come and live in her family’s home.

Sokolove, the author of the New York Times Magazine piece, went with Oher to visit the home where Oher stayed prior to moving in with the Tuohys. It was not, in fact, a trailer. It was a pre-fabricated home with four bedrooms.

When Sokolove asked Lewis about this, Lewis said that the discrepancy should be taken up with Leigh Anne Tuohy.

Nah, man. That’s on Lewis. He’s the big, bad non-fiction writer who wrote about the investment bankers and baseball executives. Now he’s authoring a book that centers around a young Black man who was living in poverty, and he can’t be bothered to accurately detail where that young man lived before coming to stay with the Tuohys?

That brings us to the bigger issue: Oher is positioned as the main character in the book, but it’s fairly clear that Lewis wasn’t all that interested in understanding the experience from Oher’s perspective at all.

Oher was a high-school senior and college freshman while Lewis was researching the book, which was published in 2006. Here’s how Oher’s involvement with the book in the recent piece in New York Times Magazine:

“Oher told me that he did not understand at the time why someone was interested in his story or how he would fit into the book. ‘I talked to him a little,’ he said of Lewis, when I asked about his involvement.”

New York Times Magazine, “The ‘Blind Side’ made him famous, but he has a different story to tell,” Aug. 18. 2024

After book was published, Lewis spoke to a group at Google. This was on Sept. 11, 2007, and he was asked to provide an update on Oher, who was beginning his third year of college:

“He’s on the dean’s list at Ole Miss, which says a lot about the dean’s list at Ole Miss.”

Michael Lewis, September 11, 2007

This is an insanely dick-ish thing to say, but in my mind, that is not the most revealing element of Lewis’s answer. Lewis goes from talking about Oher specifically to speaking in this grand generality about the nature of academics in college sports:

“But you know what, in fairness to Michael, you know, Bear Bryant had that funny line, the former coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, he once said to a reporter, we want to have a school that makes the football team proud or that the football team can be proud of.

“A lot of these schools sort of have inverted their purpose in life that there are schools like Ole Miss — but Ole Miss is not even the best example — that seem to exist mainly so that they can sustain a football team.

“And they take these kids — many of whom are from the underclass, poor Black kids from ghettos around America — and let them into the school, get them in however they can get them in, and then they create a track for them inside the school and the track is not designed for them to get an education or even to actually engage with the school outside of the football team in any way.

“It’s designed to keep their grade-point average to the level where they can continue to play football.”

Michael Lewis, September 11, 2007

He continues on from there, calling out Florida State as the prime example of this, but you get the gist.

Here’s why I think this is so telling: Lewis wrote a book in which Oher is positioned as the central figure and when he’s asked to provide an update on him, he can’t provide anything other than a throw-away joke about how college football doesn’t really value education.

It honestly makes me viscerally mad for two reasons:

1. As someone who worked for more than 20 years in sports media, I’ve come across way too many journalists who view the athletes they cover with this sort of contempt. It’s not just wrong, it’s inaccurate and it says way more about the person making the judgment that it does about the specific athletes who are being judged.

2. This author — whose book has hung over this young man’s career — doesn’t even know enough about him to provide any sort of meaningful update.

If Lewis really thinks Oher is stupid, I think that’s a nasty thing to say out loud, but he’s entitled to that opinion. However, I’m fairly certain that Lewis doesn’t know Oher well enough to even have an informed opinion about who he as anything other than a body playing football.

In all the time he spent researching and writing it he never bothered to learn where this kid was living before he came to live with his childhood friend and he didn’t keep track of what he did afterward other than to be vaguely aware that Oher had become part of Big Football.

After Oher filed his lawsuit in 2023, Lewis spoke to the Washington Post and said it was “breathtaking” that Oher could be distrustful of the Tuohys given everything they’d done.

In a profile of Lewis published in the Guardian, he went further:

“What we’re watching is a change of behaviour. This is what happens to football players who get hit in the head: they run into problems with violence and aggression.”

Michael Lewis as quoted in The Guardian

Lewis is fairly directly inferring that head injuries have compromised Oher’s cognitive ability. Essentially, Lewis saying that Oher must have brain damage to be suing Lewis’s childhood friend.

Lewis said he made this reference in anger when he spoke with Sokolove for the recent feature on Oher that appeared in the New York Times Magazine. Lewis said he regretted making the reference, but subsequently repeated it: “It should be part of the conversation about Michael Oher,” Lewis said, according to the story.

My only response to that is to wonder how Lewis would know what should be part of the conversation about Oher given how little he seemed to learn about the man.

I suppose that is hard to avoid given the subject.

After all, I was talking about how the death of my mother brought to the surface a very deep-rooted, life-defining grudge that I harbored for nearly 20 years against her second husband.

But grudges don’t have to be so serious. In fact, most of them aren’t, and I’ve spent enough years in therapy that I don’t want this newsletter to feel like my weekly visit there. So before I wade back into my own little pit of resentment, I want to use a bunch of emojis as I talk about something more managable: a golf glove.

Now this glove did not belong to me. It was purchased by a subscriber to this newsletter, who was generous enough to share the harmless little grudge that resulted from the fact that he was unhappy with the fit:

I’m an avid golfer and had purchased many clubs and other golf stuff from Pro Golf Discount over the first 15 to 20 years as a golfer.

About five years ago I spent ~$12 on a glove & after wearing it once, I wasn’t happy w/ the fit. I took it back w/ the receipt & asked to exchange it for another brand & the 20-something manning the register flat out refused.

I said, ‘Spent a lot of $ here over the years, you want to jeopardize my patronage?’

Still wouldn’t exchange. Went back once in the last 5 yrs cause I couldn’t find the Husky ball mark I wanted at Puetz Golf. Have spent thousands since at Puetz.

Ironic twist: Since I couldn’t return the glove, I wore it & actually didn’t mind it lol.

Begrudgingly yours,

NoNewBlisters

Got a grudge? Share it with [email protected].

For the record: The fact he wound up still using the glove is just (chef’s kiss). Perfect kicker.

But honestly, the actions are so reasonable that were I to be appointed judge of this particular grudge, I’d be inclined to say that this isn’t a grudge at all, but more like a boundary.

I’m basing this ruling in part on expert testimony previously received from the honorable Dr. Amy Mezulis, the co-founder and chief clinical officer at Joon Care in addition to having previously overseen the clinical psychology PhD program at Seattle Pacific University.

I asked her specifically if it was possible to have a healthy or perhaps harmless grudge.

Dr. Mezulis: “The reframe on a ‘grudge’ could be setting an appropriate boundary with a person or situation that has demonstrated it can cause you harm.”

In other words: You can minimize respond to a negative experience by minimizing or even cutting off contact without categorizing it as a grudge.

This isn’t just semantics, either.

Dr. Mezulis: “Setting a behavioral boundary is different psychologically than the cognitive and emotional effects of holding on to negative thoughts and feelings.”

In the case of the golf glove, our begrudger was disappointed that a business he had patronized for a number of years wasn’t more accommodating about a purchase that he regretted.

He communicated this clearly to the clerk, who was unmoved.

The begrudger then decided to no longer patronize the store.¹

There is no evidence of actual anger or negative emotional reaction to the aforementioned store, which — according to our expert witness — is the hallmark of an actual honest-to-goodness grudges.

Dr. Mezulis: “Cognitively, grudges keep our attention on the past rather than the present. Emotionally, grudges yield control over our well being or happiness to another person.

“If we can separate the negative thoughts and feelings from the lesson learned from the negative experience, we can keep the good (the boundary or lesson) and leave the bad (the negative thoughts and feelings).”

In other words, if this were an actual grudge, we would see signs of emotional distress. The begrudger might feel compelled to pound his fist against the steering wheel or clench his teeth every time he drove past a Pro Golf Discount. In extreme cases, he might be plotting some sort of elaborate revenge involving the destruction of property.

That our golfing friend is able to see the humor in the fact that he wound up continuing to use the glove is a sign that he’s fairly well squared away about the whole thing.

In conclusion: This appears to be an utterly healthy example of emotional processing:

• An individual was disappointed with a product that was purchased;

• He requested an accommodation;

• He was disappointed when denied this accommodation;

• He reacted by withdrawing his patronage;

• H lived happily ever after (I hope).

Now before we wade back into some more serious stuff, I’d like to reiterate that you’re welcome to share any and all grudges by emailing me at [email protected] or posting it in the comments! I reserve the right to omit or change details that could identify the parties involved unless you’re a chain store selling golf equipment in which case you’re on blast. 

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If only it were always that easy …

Before my mom died in March 2019, it’s possible I would have characterized my feelings toward my stepfather as a boundary as opposed to a grudge.

He was no longer part of my life and hadn’t been for quite some time.

I had certainly tried very hard to be a grown up about things. Initially I did this with direct communication.

In 2002 — the year after he and my mom separated — my stepfather wrote me a letter inviting me to visit him for Christmas. I responded, saying there would need to be an honest conversation about what had happened if we were going to continue having a relationship.

He never replied.

The only time I saw or spoke to him after that was at my younger brother’s college graduation, which was back in May 2005.

He walked up to me, arms extended in anticipation of an embrace. I hugged him at least in part to avoid the chance things would become uncomfortable or awkward for others.

Now, I wound up regretting the fact that I hugged him, seeing it as a sign of weakness on my part. Why did I feel compelled to conform to his expectations after everything that happened.

However, nothing bad had come of me returning his embrace, and it’s not like he remained part of my life.

He had emailed me twice since in the years, using the address from the newspapers I worked at, first the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and later The Seattle Times. I did not respond either time.

I tried very hard to become that straight-faced person who set a boundary without having any of the negative emotions and energy attached to it.

I was still the angry emoji face, however, despite active attempts to address the resentment I felt.

I began seeing a therapist in the summer of 2004 and continued that for the next five years. My anger toward my stepfather was something that we discussed. I wrote a letter to my stepfather as part of my treatment, and instead of mailing it, I read it aloud and burned it as my therapist had suggested. There was role-playing, too, as I spoke about my anger to my therapist as if he were my stepfather.

Yet I still periodically checked his LinkedIn profile, and a couple of times a year I would search his name online to see where he was living.

I always wondered if confronting him would have made me feel better, but I’d tried to do that in the most mature way I knew how, and he’d opted not to respond.

I didn’t stop thinking about him, though. I’d let my mind time travel back to a previous encounter we’d had — such as the hug at my brother’s college graduation — and imagine a different outcome. Maybe I’d stand there statue still, refusing to embrace him. Other times it was more assertive: I’d shove him with two hands, say, “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

Other times, I imagined writing a story about everything he’d done, having it published in a newspaper or magazine. Later, when I began working as a radio host, I’d picture myself interviewing him.

I had stopped talking to him, but I hadn’t stopped thinking about him. Remember what Dr. Mezulis said about grudges?

Dr. Mezulis: “Cognitively, grudges keep our attention on the past rather than the present.”

Now, I never took any tangible step toward acting on my anger, however. I didn’t crank call him or send anonymous notes, let alone make any public declarations about him.

There were several reasons for this, a primary one being my fears about how this would affect my mom. At best, it would be uncomfortable for her to hear how far back my hostility toward him went. I was fairly certain it would make her feel even worse about what was an incredibly painful chapter in her life.

That bit of calculus changed when my mom died in March 2019, though. I felt this when I started imagining what I would do if my stepfather showed up to her memorial.

My anger toward him had not cooled in the 15 years since I’d last seen him. It remained molten, and now, I could think about what I might do with that anger without worrying so much how it would affect her feelings.

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1  Except for the one time he (quite understandably) needed a piece of equipment that demonstrated allegiance to the honorable temple of higher learning and academic excellence that is the University of Washington.