I did once and I felt really bad afterwards. I was having an awful day and getting my dinner shopping done. This guy was holding a freezer door open, peering into it like it had a TV somewhere in there, in the middle of a narrow aisle. I squeeze past him without saying anything. He turns and says “Excuse you.” Not in the mood, I decide to run with the impulse and shoot back a “Fuck you, buddy.” Now, this is in the Bronx, so it becomes a scene of this guy following me around insulting me, me talking to my bf, saying can you believe this guy, and insulting him. It was kind of cool – I like to get my ire up sometimes, and enjoy it when people don’t get scared and actually do yell back at me. But eventually I stopped enjoying the fight and got mean, and insulted his (surgically repaired) cleft palate, saying something about how insecure he must be because of his harelip and how this whole spat must really be making him feel like a big man. He went quiet and got this hurt look, and that was the end of that. I shouldn’t have said anything about his cleft palate.
It’s something that both my bf and I had to work on back when we used to have fights – not bringing up stuff the other person did in the past that was hurtful, but is not pertinent to the argument at hand. The temptation to wring everything out all at once is easy to give in to.
I think it’s something common to most if not all humans. One of those impulses we all have to fight, I guess.