Calm down? No, thank you

I was watching football the other day (a note: it’s the Fall, so you could substitute “I was watching football,” for “I was awake and not in the shower, though I’m thinking of having a TV installed…”) when I saw something that caught my attention.

It was late-ish in a pretty critical situation in a fairly tight game when the quarterback walked back to the sideline and yelled, repeatedly for his obviously animated head coach, to “calm down.”

OK, anyone with even the most basic ability to read lips can tell exactly what he was saying so it’s more a matter of the gist of his comment(s) being that the coach should calm down. There was some interjection as to the degree to which the coach should calm down. It’s a common but not exactly standard unit of measurement but the exact phraseology we’ll leave to the imagination, since this is both a family column and a family newspaper.

I think it also fair to pause here long enough to ask if yelling at someone to calm down is better described as ironic or hypocritical? Or both? Sort of like telling a crying child to stop crying or you’ll give them something to cry about. Which is both cruel and incredibly counterproductive. But, while we will judge and try to avoid those who take that approach, we’ll leave them to figure out how to pay for the counseling bills that practice sparks.

Which leads us to the larger question, beyond when the dynamic between coaches and the coached changed to the degree that a player feels comfortable yelling at someone who is, at least nominally, his boss (and the answer: when contracts rose to the point where players may not be in a financial position to actually buy the teams they play for, but are close).

And that question is, in the history of human communication, in all the languages we speak, sign or draw, in all the many and various ways we can exchange information with others, has saying “calm down” to someone ever actually worked?

I’m going to suggest the answer is “no.”

Yes, I realize I’m not being very scientific here. I’m sure I should be researching this more fully, perhaps seeking a government grant to study the question that all of us have to address at some point, since it’s likely we’ve found ourselves on both the giving and receiving ends of requests to maybe chill a bit.

But I’d have to say that, based on my experience as a son, husband, parent, grandparent and person who has had to be in contact with other people, I’ve never witnessed someone who has been told to calm down do just that.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the request tends to have the equal and converse reaction. That those asked to calm down frequently go the other way. Quickly.

This is called “escalation,” and it’s exactly the opposite of what we want when we tell someone to calm down. Or, at least that’s what we’re going to say.

And yet, on multiple occasions, like when your head coach is acting like an idiot when he should be providing you with some insight or direction or when your spouse is indicating that she has… thoughts… about something you’ve just done or not done, depending on the circumstances, suggesting someone “calm down” is a lever we pull that maybe we might be better off forgetting we had access to.

I’d also like to pause for a moment and make clear that use of the pronoun “she” was simply coincidental and bears no specific reference to any person living or dead or any particular incident or long-standing body of incidents.

You know, in case someone I may happen to be married to reads this. And wants to provide constructive feedback.

So where does this leave us? Well, in the case of the referenced football team, apparently the coach either did calm down enough to provide insight (unlikely) or the quarterback was so used to these outbursts he overlooked them long enough to come up with his own solutions (likely), because the team scored and won the game.

As for the rest of us, well, these are increasingly heated times in our world. Frankly we could all do well to take a step back, reconsider and, you know, calm down.

But you didn’t hear that from me. Which means there’s a good chance you might just do it.

—