“You are approaching ‘Kermit’ stage again,” said my wife.

I winced.

Last week, my wife posted on Facebook a five-second video clip of Muppet hero Kermit The Frog furiously typing.

The video, viewable via a Google search for “Kermit the Frog piano video,” displays Kermit in frenetic mode. His shoulders are hunched and flailing from side to side. His head is bobbing rapidly. His froggie fingers are assaulting the keyboard of the old manual typewriter with a rapidity that blurs their images. The typewriter jerks with each phrase he types. His gaze is intent, focused … angry.

That, she says, is how I type when I am answering some political idiot or politically correct dolt on Facebook. To make matters worse, she got emphatic agreement via Facebook postings from my former co-workers, from friends, even from members of my family.

Is that raving lunatic really me? Well, yes and no.

My viewpoints do differ from others who post opinions on that social media forum.

But I view my responses as restrained, polite and courteous.

I do not type furiously all the time.

Proof?

I am still using a six-year-old laptop computer keyboard. It functions perfectly.

However, my wife, whose desk is beside mine in our middle-room-cum-office, has gone through at least two keyboards, possibly three, in that time span. She will blame spilled food or drink, but perhaps some of the vicious keyboard banging occurs at her desk, hmm?

Once in awhile, my usually sweet and meek nature does yield to a mild outburst of passion as I type, “YOU MO-RONNNNN!”

When that happens, my wife does see the bent-forward, flying-fingers intensity of that typing.

What she does not notice is that I usually highlight the text, tell the computer keyboard to “copy,” and then delete the posting. I wait a few minutes and then edit it before hitting “send.”

I have even been known to open a new Word document and paste the Facebook rant into Word, saving it for awhile while I walk away from the computer to limber up my age-stiffened back and legs, and clear my mind. Later, I open the Word document and edit for decorum there before reconnecting to Facebook and posting my milder, kinder version of a demurring opinion.

I had to be taught to delay hitting “send.”

Back before Facebook but after email became common, I unnecessarily angered or seriously hurt the feelings of some people.

Remember, for 50 years, I have earned a living in good part by writing opinion pieces.

Strongly worded opinion pieces are more often read fully by readers than are restrained essays. If logically and accurately crafted, strongly worded opinion pieces are more persuasive than are mild pieces. In writing for those newspapers, my job was to intellectually frame an argument – and, besides, to elicit a gut reaction from readers.

Anger, agreement; sadness, happiness; outrage, vindication; the nature of those gut reactions would vary. But for an opinion piece to be effective, it should provoke reader reactions both intellectually and emotionally.

So, yes, I reached “Kermit” intensity in writing those pieces – the first drafts.

Back before email and computers, that wasn’t a problem. Nothing got “sent” immediately. We typed onto actual sheets of paper. We reread what we had written before sending them to another editor, who also read them and made sarcastic remarks if we had gone too far. In most instances, a third set of eyes in the newsroom read them.

There were even more eyes involved. The typesetters and page assemblers in the composing room would ask, “Are you really sure you want us to print this pieceapoop?” Their words were actually more pungent, but they knew quite well what ought and ought not to appear in family newspapers in those days. They saved me from verbal idiocy on innumerable occasions.

Today, almost all of that is gone. The advent of computers eliminated typesetters; machines set type today. Spell-checkers and grammar programs can offer “correctness,” but do nothing about tone.

When email came along, I committed a few brutally insensitive “sends.”

Mortified, I trained myself to not hit “send,” but to find a “save as draft” key and hit it. Later, with editing, I could preserve the forcefulness of the argument but eliminate the offensive excesses.

Facebook doesn’t have a “hold it for awhile” button, so I use the copy-and-save routine – most of the time.

What my wife sees is the Kermit-like intensity of the first draft.

It is funny to watch.

But if we really get that mad and then hit “send,” we aren’t exchanging opinions. We are smothering rational thought in a sea of vehemence and vindictiveness.

To paraphrase an effective TV commercial, “Don’t be that ‘Kermit’ me.”

Find a way to “save as draft.” We can still make our points.

We’ll all get along much better.

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.