It appears that we live in a time when rage is, well, the rage. Road rage, fan rage, and now stage rage.

According to a survey in London, 92 percent of respondents reported annoyance by others in the theatre. Rustling candy wrappers led the pack, followed by talking, and the ringing of cell phones.

I inherited a walloping case of stage rage from my father, and I can remember when I got it. He and I were in Boston at a pre-Broadway performance of Frank Loesser’s “Most Happy Fella,” and two of Boston’s infamous dowagers were sitting behind us, chatting away.

When the overture began, the chatting did not cease, so my father turned toward them, but said nothing. When the chat continued, he turned around and managed a baleful expression, but this did no good, and then he turned back again, and said, “Would you two old bats kindly shut the $%!@$@#$ up, so we can hear the show?”

Silence reigned throughout the balance of the performance. Later, I asked him about it – he matter of factly said that his view was that nothing was ruder than making unnecessary noise in a theatre unless it was being late to the performance, and that he’d paid good money to see the show, and if the ladies wanted to talk, they should go to the lobby and do so without impairing the pleasure of others.

He didn’t know it, but that moment, I joined the “stage ragers.”

It appears that we live in an age of “wrongful entitlement,” where, if we want to do something, we just go ahead and to hell with the consequences. Or some of us…certainly not you…or me.

I sit behind one older female at a concert series, and I have concluded she must take leave of the tuberculosis ward in order to destroy, with calculated determination, the pleasures of a recital. After a variety of uncovered sniffles and coughs, she SNAPS open her purse, unwraps the CRINKLY AND NOISY material covering her lozenge, then SNAPS her purse shut again. This occurs several times each concert.

The only good I derive from her actions is that I understand more clearly why crimes of passion occurs.

Today, I discovered a new kind of rage – catalogue rage. The LL Bean catalogue arrived in the mail today for autumn, AUTUMN. It is not even the middle of July, and we should have visions of dead leaves, cold nights, imminent snow in our heads – NOT!?

I have refused to open it – in fact it’s in the tickler file for the first of September. I can wait, and frankly, so should they.

Cheers, grrrrrrr!

Nick