People have a tendency to piss me off

Okay, so my Wal-Mart story from the weekend. I'm sitting in my van with Anna and John M. in the parking lot of W-M, eating our gourmet lunch from Mickey D's. We do this often, eat in the car before going on the dreaded Wal-Mart adventure. I notice a lady getting into her car that's parked on the left of me. I don't pay much attention to her, because you know, I'm concentrating on my fries and all.

Next thing I know, I feel my van shake and hear a 'boom'. I'm thinking, 'that's great, she just hit me when she was backing out', but I look over at her and her car is still a little ways away. She kind of throws her hands up, as if to say, 'Sorry, I'm not sure what happened'. So we both get out and she walks around to my van. In between our cars, there's a buggy turned on its side. Apparently, she hit it while backing up and it fell between our cars. I check for damage to my van and all I see is a very small scratch on the plastic strip on my van door. So, thinking that I'm being nice about the whole thing, I tell her 'We don't have to worry about that, it's just a tiny scratch'. She comes back with, 'Well, YES WE DO have to worry about it, because look at my car!'. The buggy had dented in her door and scratched the side of her car. Well, fine, sorry about that, but it had nothing to do with me. She called 911. Yes, you heard that right, she actually called 911 because SHE hit a shopping cart in the Wal-Mart parking lot. All real emergencies will have to take a back seat to that for a minute!

So, she gets in touch with the local police and they're on their way. I figure, at this point, this really has nothing to do with me, so I get my kids out of the car. Anna tells me that she actually saw what happened (she was in the back of the van). She says there was a buggy behind the lady's car and she backed out fast, hit the buggy, and it flew between our cars. Anyway, I'm making a short story long here . . I wait a minute for the lady to get off of her cell phone. She had called her dad to tell them about what happened. I'm standing behind her with the kids and I realize that she doesn't know I'm standing there.

Here's what she tells her dad, 'I was just involved in an accident in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. A lady opened her door and knocked a buggy into my car and dented it. She went in the store with her kids already.' WTF? She's standing there telling a total lie without a thought. Anna looks at me with a gaping mouth 'Mom, did you hear what she said? She's blaming you. That's not what happened!'. I said, 'I know, I'm going to get this straight'. At this point, the lady realizes we're standing right behind her. She hangs up the phone, whips around and says, 'OH, I didn't see you there, I thought you had gone in the store.'. I told her that I had not hit her car; that I hadn't even opened my door until it was all over. She's really embrarrassed at this point and says, 'Oh okay, alright, I misunderstood.'. Yeah, sure lady, whatever.

The police come. I didn't hear what she told them, but I know that she lied about the incident because when Anna told them what she saw, the officer turned to the lady and says 'OH, so the cart was behind your car and you just backed into it?!", in a tone that said that wasn't at all what she had reported. She just turned the other way and didn't say a word.

Anna was asked to write her statement; she was thrilled to be a 'witness'! I turned to go in the store. I was never told 'Sorry', 'Thank you', anything at all.

I guess this is just a sign of the times. No one wants to be held accountable for their actions. They are careless and don't want to pay for their mistakes. They want someone else to pay. If it takes lying to get that accomplished, they do it without a thought. What an awful example for our kids; I hated for Anna to see that. But on the other hand, it was at least an example of what NOT to do. Geez . .