Dear Crazy Woman Who Misses Flight: You had me at 'Aiiiiiiiiaahhhh'

We all have moments in life that we allow to happen just because we think, “Only a limited number of people will ever know I did this.”

Or, I should say, we used to have those moments. We don’t anymore. Every day our behavior is on display — recorded in blogs, on Facebook or on someone’s phone and uploaded to YouTube.

The task of conducting ourselves in a becoming way is now a full-time job, day and night, in the house and out of the house. (Sometimes I worry that the webcam on my laptop will accidentally turn on and record me drinking out of the wine bottle while Googling “weird bumps on tongue.” I assure you, not a pretty freeze-frame.)

These days, events like Christian Bale’s self-important, theatrical rant about a lighting guy who traipsed through his eye line will never go away. Michael Phelps would still be swimming in Kellogg’s if the camera phone had never been invented. And that poor Chinese woman who had a serious at-the-counter incident after she was late for her flight out of Hong Kong International Airport ... well, that would just be whispers over fortune cookies were it not for an airport employee’s quick flip of the video-phone.

The woman, as you will see, went bat-guano crazy. She screamed, lunged, blamed her husband, cried, called her husband stupid, fell on the ground, writhed, banged on the counter, begged for humanity, questioned airport policy and wailed for three recorded minutes, all because she was going to be delayed for a few hours.

And let’s just say, I can relate.

Who doesn’t feel like throwing an adult temper tantrum every once and again — especially these days, when things are just so depressing and awful? Little things can really get to you when you’re stressed out. And I’m not just saying that to justify almost — almost — throwing myself down on the floor at the grocery store the other day.

Here’s how it went down: I was standing in a somewhat long line, reading up on the latest Jessica Simpson news, when an employee came over and shuttled me to the Express Lane, despite my protests of, “But I have more than 10 items!” (... and there’s an article in here about Spencer and Heidi that I didn’t get to!) Like a grocery store saint, she smiled serenely and said, “Don’t worry. It’ll be OK.”

I nervously looked around as I started to put my 25 or so items on the belt, hiding cat food under cheese and concealing the number of yogurts I had by pushing them really close together. But I knew it wasn’t right.

Soon, more Express Lane customers joined the line, no doubt with the expectation that this would be quick. And the person in front of me was just starting to pay — when the saint disappeared.

Suddenly I was left alone. No loud explanation to the cashier, “It’s OK. I told her she could do this.” No grocery store advocate to stay with me until I was safely at the bagging station. No kind face in the mob! Now I was nothing more than an Express Lane scofflaw, a woman who thinks she’s too good to wait in line. I was "that" person — the one who tries to say, “But my 12 cans of soup should count as one item!”

I could feel my heartbeat get faster. A cold sweat broke out behind my ears. I could practically hear the customer behind me counting my items with disgust.

It was at that moment the cashier caught sight of my red face and abundance of items. He immediately gave me an annoyed smirk, shook his head and said, “Ma’am ...”

And before he could finish, I melted down. Badly. A combination of Southern Baptist lawyer and Charles Manson escaped from my mouth.

I don’t remember much — just that my rant started with “Looky here” and concluded with me tossing a box of oatmeal onto the belt and announcing loudly to the store, “I didn’t want to be in this line in the first place, SIR. I was happy before this! I was happy! You think I wanted to be in your STUPID LINE?”

The shame I felt afterward was immeasurable. And it’s worse now as I realize how easily I could have become Crazy Lady in Grocery Store Has Too Many Items in Express Lane and Loses Her Temper Over the Stupidest Problem Ever.

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