by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Guys, time to be told: Under no circumstance should you ever hit or physically harm a woman.

The message has to be drilled into our thick skulls. It might seem unnecessary to repeat but I suspect we don't get told enough. As a result, guys get overwhelmed with rage and some otherwise good people succumb to violent and destructive episodes.

When I was 19, my girlfriend phoned and confessed that she had cheated on me. The news hit like a frying pan. I saw red, felt dizzy and disoriented, my heart pounded drums and adrenaline shot through my system. I felt breathless and couldn't think straight.

It was a shock. I considered myself a wimpy, well-mannered PBS-watcher who could almost tell a dinner fork from a dessert fork. But I too was a hothead.

I've since wondered why nobody warned me - and by extension other young men - about the ugly and unpredictable place called Lost Temperland.

Teachers could have found time to jam this in during high school. We wasted a lot of time discussing other less important stuff. Physics? Never used it since. Chemistry? Couldn't figure it out, didn't have to. Shakespeare? Trivia for the chattering class. And countless hours of other blah blah and scribbling but never a word suggesting how to cope with the rage we'd all inevitably encounter sometime in our lives. That omission from the curriculum might have had tragic consequences.

One year at our high school a popular jock killed his girlfriend. He then tried to kill himself. After that, the cute, vulnerable druggie with the unlaced Converse and mop of brown hair killed his girlfriend then himself.

A few years later, our school's clever and charismatic valedictorian shot his girlfriend with a crossbow in an Ottawa parking lot. He has written me in the hope that I'll argue it really wasn't his fault. It was.

And now comes possibly the fourth spouse killer in the span of three graduating years at Westmount High. Tommy Kane, NFL football star, local legend, boy-who-made good has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of his estranged wife and mother of his four kids.

That's four dead women. The killers' lives are pretty much over too. Families ruined, hearts broken.

None of these things would have happened had cooler heads prevailed.

So it bears repeating: Guys. If. You. Ever. Feel. Jealous. Or. Pissed. Off. At. A Woman. Just. Stay. Cool.

Even if a situation offends your sense of justice or inconveniences you, acting on rage won't help. Think logically. Step back. Make a plan. Breathe deep. Count to 10. Measure your words. Don't lash out. Realize that not everybody is out to get you and you're not absolutely entitled to fairness at all times. Advice is out there on how to deal with rage but you've got to look for it.

Society pours a lot of cash into centres for battered women but it's a rare nickel that's earmarked towards education and prevention of violent outbursts. Much destruction of lives could be prevented if men were properly equipped to cope with sudden feelings of rage.

Hopefully the teachers of the world will spend more time with the young men getting the message through.

• • •

Halle Berry's ghost tale: Sadly, I'm no longer a Westmounter (last year the city's top English-language radio morning man bought the house I grew up in) but I still keep tabs and my well used library card. I've noticed there's now 24-hour plainclothes surveillance at Premier Charest's home, and why not? Crime has hit Upper Westmount, as Halle Berry recently explained on Jay Leno. When filming Gothika, Berry stayed at 94 Summit Crescent, a 7,000-square-foot mansion from 1961 evaluated at $1.5 mil. She says she was getting massaged when she heard an intruder, and she got spooked when they found nobody so she moved downtown. Sounds dubious. I'm told that Hollywood stars often sign on to stay in Westmount but relocate when they realize that downtown is far more entertaining.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca