While I like to think that I'm pretty good at holding petty grudges and making oblivious arch-enemies, when it comes to things like that, I am just a child compared to my lovely wife, who can muster a righteous, incandescent fury that is glorious to watch.
She's an incredibly kind, warm and generous woman, but if you ever mess with her or her loved ones, your arse is grass, pal. She will do anything necessary to get her recompense or revenge, and will hold on to that grudge until the end of time.
As somebody who has always been attracted to strong, powerful women, I find this aspect of her sexy as hell, and am constantly grateful that the love of my life tends to direct this anger towards things like noisy neighbours or douchebag co-workers.
But sometimes it still really does freak me out how far she will take these things, like the time she ended up hiding from a thief behind an elevator shaft in a deserted car park at five in the morning. That might have been going a bit far.
The thief in her office didn't steal from the company they all worked at, he stole from his workmates, which is probably worse. The money disappeared from a staff lottery fund one night, and while it was only fifty bucks, it was an unforgivable breach of trust.
Everyone knew who did it, because there was only one office douche who would do something like that, but nobody could prove anything, and he had a close family member slightly up the corporate chain, so if anybody was going to accuse him of anything, they needed to be bloody sure.
The wife certainly did, and wasn't going to just sit there and take that kind of rudeness. We were watching a lot of TV detective shows like Veronica Mars and several danish crime series like The Killing and The Bridge, and I have no doubt the exploits of the take-no-shit women in those shows inspired her to get off her arse and do something about it.
So when they gave the thief a subtle time window in which he could return the money, the only way somebody was going to catch him was to get up at four in the morning and stake-out the scene, which is exactly what she did.
I knew I'd never talk her out of it when I saw the cold fire in her eyes, but I also knew she could take care of herself if things got ugly. She'd had self-defence training and her trusty pocket-knife, and she'd been aching for years to stab any dick who tried to fuck with her, (she once almost stabbed a taxi driver in Cairo in the neck with her pen, but that's another story altogether). I thought she was mad, but I knew she'd be safe.
Unfortunately, her nemesis got to her work before she did, so she couldn't catch him in the act, and had to hide away when he was coming out, ducking behind a lift shaft. He didn't see her, which was fortunate, because she had no good explanation for what she was doing, either than trying to catch a thief.
In the end, another of her co-workers - who probably thought of himself more as Sherlock Holmes - got the thief to confess and he was tossed out of the job, (although, with those family connections, he got off a lot more lightly than he should have).
This was all a few years ago now, but the lovely wife hasn't forgotten what that guy did, and certainly hasn't forgiven. She still checks in on him now and again, pleased to see he's still a total fuck-up, and just a little fuming that he almost got away with it all.
A lot of my ethics and morals that allow me to get through this life come from Superman and Batman, so I certainly can't judge her for being so influenced by Saga Norén and Sarah Lund, and can only be grateful she doesn't share those characters' self-destructive tendencies.
And I'm even more glad when she just wants to wear big chunky jumpers, instead of tracking down thieves in the middle of the night.
I'm not worried for her, I'm worried for the people she goes after. If her co-worker/thief had peeked around the corner of that lift shaft that cold early morning, he would have got a blade in the face. It's what those badass women would do.
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