Moms Have Breaking Points Too

It has assumed the status of urban legend, the tale of my face-off with the old man in the parking lot.

I hear it from the parents of my daughter’s friends, from my neighbors and my relatives . . . told and retold by the child who witnessed it all.

A child in awe of the belligerence displayed by a woman she thought she knew . . . a mom who always holds doors for strangers, helps seniors with their grocery shopping, punishes rudeness in her children and counsels them toward courtesy.

*

It was the tail end of a weekend full of unrelenting holiday fare--a string of Halloween parties and carnivals, a school picnic, a church festival, two soccer games. And with less than an hour to go before “trick-or-treat,” I was still searching our local markets for pumpkins, which family tradition dictated we carve before we leave.

So when the elderly man in the baseball cap chastised my 14-year-old daughter, it was bound to get on my last good nerve. We’d left the market empty-handed, and en route to the car, my daughter retrieved an errant grocery cart and added it to a cluster straddling a row of empty parking spaces. But as she walked away, the cart rolled off and skimmed the bumper of a beat-up pickup parked a few feet away.

“Hey,” a man yelled, as he loaded grocery bags in the pickup’s bed. “Did that hit my truck? You take that cart back where it belongs!”

Maybe it was the look of shame on her face as my daughter dutifully climbed out of our car, corralled the cart and hauled it away. Or maybe it was the meanness I heard in his voice, the disdain in the order he’d shouted her way.

But I felt my heart race and a lump rise in my throat. And suddenly I was out of my car, shouting back at him. “Hey, don’t yell at my daughter like that. That’s not even our cart. She was just trying to be helpful, getting it out of the way.”

I’m not sure now just what my voice carried--maybe anger or hostility, when it was really weariness I felt. He glared at me, then looked away, and I could hear him muttering under his breath. The young woman with him--his daughter, maybe--admonished us both: “OK, now calm down everybody.”

Then he looked straight at me--in defiance of her, as much as of me--and yelled in a voice that carried across the empty spaces and stung me like a slap to the cheek: “Bitch!”

And before I knew it, I was striding his way, fists clenched and heart pounding. “You . . . old man,” I sputtered, as he slammed shut the back of his truck and turned to walk away.

I waved my fist in the air and yelled again, louder. “You say that again and I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” The lexicon of every schoolyard battle I’d ever witnessed came back to me. “I’ll kick your ass!”

I felt weak in the knees when the words came out. I was shaking as I turned to leave.

I have never thrown a punch, never cussed someone out, never been in a fight in my life. And at that moment, I don’t know which I feared more, that the old man might haul off and deck me, or that he had unleashed some hidden menace in me.

*

I have seen parents lose it in public . . . go after the ref on the soccer field or the opposing coach at a basketball game. And I’ve tsk-tsked such lack of control; endlessly lectured my own children on the error of those parents’ ways.

Now here I was, exchanging expletives with a complete stranger, threatening to pummel a man old enough to be my dad.

Was it outrage or simple rage? A mother springing to the defense of her child, or a frustrated, angry, overwrought woman, lashing out because her weekend had gone bad?

And what was my daughter to make of it all . . . this teenager who, under even ordinary circumstances, is by turns amused and embarrassed by her mom.

“What I did, what I said, was wrong,” I told her later. “I should never have lost my temper that way. Or used that kind of language.”

She nodded, her eyes meeting mine in somber assent. But her lips held the barest trace of a smile.

Mothers, she knows, have breaking points too. And while I may have acted the part of a fool, it was on her behalf, she presumes. There is something that can make you feel precious when someone cares enough to threaten mayhem to avenge an assault on your honor.

Still, I feel chagrin--shame, even--each time the story surfaces. And my friends, on whose good judgment I rely, are split between absolution and condemnation.

Some say my response was justified--that the stranger’s use of an epithet merited my strong rebuke. Others are dismayed that I didn’t just turn the other cheek; that I set such a poor example of the tolerance and love I preach. And some are simply disappointed that I lashed out at a harmless old man who was probably just tired and cranky, like me.

I can find truth in each of those judgments.

So, if you’re reading this, sir: I am sorry about what happened that day. What I said was mean; what I did was wrong.

But don’t ever yell at my child again.

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.