A mother, her daughter and two women named Kathy walked into a room with a red light on, wearing motocross masks and jumpsuits. This isn’t the beginning of a stupid joke, but a true retelling of a recent Monday night when I took my mom and two of her best friends—yes, both named Kathy—out for dinner and drinks , and an angry room.
When my family moved to Florida, we moved down the street from the Kathy family, not knowing that they would become my honorary aunt and my mom’s “sworn sworn friends,” raising their family side by side. I lived with my mom and Aunt Kathy during my parents’ divorce, and when the apartment my mom and I lived in wasn’t big enough to accommodate everyone, Kathy B. threw all my birthday and graduation parties. So when they all came to town for a visit recently, I thought it might be the perfect time to treat the ladies to a night of furious fun.
As it happened, I had recently completed a year of trauma therapy after losing contact with my father, and Aunt Kathy had just finalized her own divorce, and our room was filled with anger. So, we did what girls do best: we stopped for margaritas and Mexican food along the way. As we ate dinner, we talked about the good things that were happening in our lives now and the bad things that had happened to us in the past. As we paid the bill, our anger boiled over a little.
In the rage room, we signed waivers, zipped up our cybersuits, donned full-face masks, and selected our weapons of choice from a wall of tennis rackets, wrenches, hammers, crowbars, and even bowling balls. The kind hostess led us into a room with red lightbulbs, “Anger Management” spray-painted above the door, and a giant galvanized metal target covering the back wall. She showed us where some of the larger items were—an old mirror, a coffee table, a printer—as well as the crates of ceramics and glassware we were going to smash. She then said she would be back in 30 minutes, then closed the door and I asked Alexa to blow angry rock music into the room.
Then we started having a big fuss. Kathy B. threw crystal glasses into the air and Aunt Kathy knocked them down with a hammer. My mom put a black printer on the table—a generous term for a set of metal buckets topped with plywood—and started smashing it into pieces. I took aim at the ugly dry-stick-framed wall mirror and gleefully slammed the crowbar hard into its center.
Then we started having a big fuss.
Did you know? Feel so good. I leaned against the wall and broke the frame into as many small pieces as I could, and when I was done, I threw the pieces as hard as I could at the giant metal target. It was a tantrum and exorcism of all the anger I had in my life, the inability to feel or express my emotions about my father’s treatment of me, all of which resurfaced during therapy with nowhere to go. I could feel how irritated I was becoming, my temper flaring over minor inconveniences and the normal frustrations of dealing with my three-year-old son. Every time I would say to myself, “No, don’t be angry, don’t be like dad.” But being in a rage room at a strip mall where I could be as angry, violent, and destructive as I wanted for 30 minutes wasn’t just normal Yes, and it is encouraged.
My mom yelled as I threw the plate against the wall like a discus. Aunt Kathy handed me another one, and another, and another. Cathy B. slipped out of the room and asked for another box of old china for us. We all cheered when Aunt Kathy placed her old iPhone (a source of great stress) on top of a bucket and used a hammer to destroy it, otter box and all. It all feels like a 2024 suburban version of witches dancing naked in the woods. We were just there, having fun wreaking havoc, and no one was around to snipe at us for it—although after seeing us wielding those crowbars, I doubt they would.
In a world that’s increasingly unsafe for women—a world in which I can’t go online without seeing a misogynist spouting “your body, my choice” or another The faces of women who have lost their lives to abortion bans – it feels so good to be outwardly angry rather than sit in silence and keep scrolling. To exact some revenge on inanimate objects, yes, but in my case, after unblocking and “letting myself feel it” in therapy for the past year, letting all the anger out of my body. As we hung up our wrenches and hammers and walked out, with tons of broken glass embedded in the soles of our sneakers, it’s safe to say we all felt a little lighter.
Katie McPherson is the associate lifestyle editor for Romper and Scary Mommy. She enjoys reading, kickboxing, horseback riding, and lounging on the couch after a long day. She married her college sweetheart and now they have a son, a very large dog, and joint pain.
