I remember standing at the front of that auditorium, presenting my capstone project on urban planning demographics, twenty years old and acutely aware of the silence. It was the kind of hushed expectation that makes every minor tremor in your voice feel amplified, a palpable weight pressing in from the tiered seating. Dr. Evans, a man whose permanent expression seemed to hover somewhere between intellectual disdain and mild indigestion, sat front and center, arms crossed. I was halfway through my third slide, discussing projected commuter patterns for a suburban development just like the one I now live in, when it hit me. A sudden, visceral urge to scream "FUCK YOU" at the top of my lungs. Not a quiet, internal thought, mind you, but a full-throated, unadulterated expulsion of profanity, aimed directly at him and the entire quiet, judging room. It was an intrusive thought, yes, but not in the fleeting sense. This was a persistent, almost hypnotic command, reverberating in my head even as I articulated the statistical significance of highway exit improvements. My heart rate accelerated. My palms, I could feel them, growing damp. The sheer irrationality of it was jarring – there was no overt provocation, no particular animosity towards Dr. Evans beyond the general student-professor dynamic. Yet, the impulse was so powerful, so compelling, that I had to exert a conscious, physical effort to keep my mouth closed, to keep the words from escaping. It felt like holding a volatile, live thing captive behind my teeth. The shame, of course, that would follow such an outburst in that setting… the utter obliteration of all future prospects. It was unthinkable. And yet, the desire persisted. For years, I've observed these moments of cognitive dissonance. They surface periodically, these sudden, disruptive urges to behave in ways utterly contrary to my established persona. Like the time I nearly threw a gallon of milk at a teenager who cut me off in the grocery store aisle, or the inexplicable desire to just walk away from a perfectly civil neighborhood potluck, right in the middle of Mrs. Henderson’s monologue about her prize-winning petunias. It’s not anger, not exactly. More like a sudden, potent rebellion against the endless, quiet adherence to societal expectation. A momentary breach in the carefully constructed edifice of decorum. It’s an interesting phenomenon, really, how much energy is expended daily, hourly even, to simply remain… appropriate. And to think, it started so young, this internal wrestling match. I wonder how many other people in their suburban homes, driving their sensible sedans, are secretly fighting the urge to just… detonate.