Last weekend, I came home from a lovely afternoon at Disney on Ice, tossed my keys on the kitchen table and sighed the kind of sigh that lets a little of your soul fly out. My husband Mike raised an eyebrow, and asked if we had a nice time.

"Welllllllll, if our 3 year-old drops an 'F-Bomb' any time in the next 24-48 hours, you can hold me personally responsible."

Mike shook his head and walked away. He does that a lot. We've been married for almost seven years, and he is used to (however not always approving of) my hijinks.

I had been a bad Mama, again. There was "an incident" and I did not use my "best possible manners in the worst possible situation" as I'd expect my children to do. Oh, no. I did the opposite. I used some of my worst manners in a bad situation, shocking even myself with my fury-filled trucker mouth.

Here's how it went down:

My friend Dena and I took our girls Sammy Jo and Emma (both knocking on 3) to see Mickey on skates at the local ice arena. It was a good show, overpriced souvenirs and refreshments aside (when did a bag of popcorn get to be $10 I ask you?). Anyway, we enjoyed the show, and then we drove back to the restaurant where we'd parked her car so we could carpool to the arena. Dena, who is officially 10 or 11 months pregnant now, began to take her daughter out of my back seat.

Just then, a middle-aged couple in a cheapest-of-all-models-white Mercedes Benz pulled up beside her. The man yelled something out his window at me about taking up “the whole damn road” and that other people need to "get through the damn parking lot."

I could feel myself morphing into the furious suburban mom version of the Incredible Hulk. My jaw clenched, and flexed. My Return-to-Tiffany tag bracelet strained, bent, and shot links in all directions, like shrapnel. Same with the Tag Heuer on my other wrist. My mauve Mac'd lips were now green, huffing, and snarling.

I'll admit I was kind of in the middle of the parking lot aisle. However, I left enough room for another car to get by, if they could simply not wait the 2 minutes it would take my friend to unbuckle her daughter.

That said, I fired off a comment about how he could have a tad more patience, and couldn't he see my pregnant friend hauling her sleepy toddler out of the friggin back seat?

But he was relentless in his quest to correct my use of common parking lot space. He yelled something, I yelled something back. He yelled something else, I yelled something else back. He was in hot pursuit of having the final word.

Suddenly, shocking even myself, I exercised what my husband refers to as my "Nuclear Option." I launched the words at him like heavy mortar fire. They were the last words he expected to hear, especially from the lips of a mother of small children, wearing strappy sandals and a perky sundress.

"Well, FUCK YOU."

Sigh.

I did a quick filter check – yep. I was afraid of that. Mine was completely off, and that had just happened. I "went there", right out my SUV window. This happened In the parking lot of The Old Spaghetti Factory, a favorite local family establishment, I might add.

And the thing is, this leprechaunic jackass wasn't even worth getting that upset over. But he had to invade our day, and say something unnecessary. Then he just kept it up, and kept it up. Why did he do that? But more importantly, why did I fire back the way I did? That wasn't me. It wasn’t setting a good example. And, possibly worst of all, it simply wasn't very classy.

Why do these public outbursts happen to even the best of us? I have come to the conclusion that the main reason is we're all just a bit edgier than usual these days. What are we all so angry about? Really?

Obviously, the economic climate is a real shit storm of joblessness and despair, and everyone is feeling the pinch one way or another. A gallon of milk costs what the whole cow used to. Same goes with gasoline, electricity, diapers, and everything else. On the other hand, many of our paychecks are not what they once were, or what they really ought to be in order to keep up with the rising cost of absolutely everything.

Meanwhile, our employers continually exploit the crappy economy as a way to make their employees do more work for less pay, They lord job security over our heads, as though there is actually any such thing anymore.

No wonder we're edgy.

Add to that the fact that a lot of people have poor physical and emotional health, regardless. Perhaps as Americans we are all born with myriad pre-existing mental and physical conditions. Who knows? The crabby cashier at the grocery store may be about to have her car repo’d. The bitchy lady in line at the gas station may be filing for divorce this week. The jerk who shoots you a dirty look because your kids are too loud in McDonalds may be worried about the lump the doctor just found in his wife's breast. We have no way of knowing.

After I yelled at the parking lot guy, I felt horrible. I apologized to my friend, who laughed and said he had it coming, and to forget it. Maybe he did have it coming, but that didn't make me feel better about being the one to give it to him. Especially in front of 2 toddlers, even if they were in a Disney/sugar induced state of semi-consciousness.

Three days passed. I digested the fact that I had been a bad mommy, and basically had given the big middle finger to the Golden Rule I am constantly preaching. But something good came out of it. I made myself a promise that I would try to be better. I would be more aware of my surroundings, and of other people’s feelings. I would silently acknowledge the invisible backpacks full of troubles and worries and sorrows that we all tote around on a daily basis. I would do better next time. I had to.

And sure enough, "next time" rolled around. I was shopping with my mom and daughter just yesterday, and a woman standing next to me knocked over a large floral display. I bent down to help her pick it up, and she just stood there and let me do it, as though I was sporting an apron and name tag and getting paid an hourly wage. She never even said thank you as I cleaned up her mess. After I “helped” her, and she ignored me, I just kept on walking, holding my daughter’s hand.

“How rude!” My mom (no stranger to public confrontation herself) remarked. Loudly. I shrugged it off, and told her it just wasn’t worth the energy. Plus, Sammy was watching. We walked away, and my daughter squeezed my hand, looked up at me, and smiled.

“You nice mama. You nice laaaaaady.”

And in that instant, I did feel nice, and I felt like a lady. In fact, I felt like Audry Hepburn herself. You know. If Audry had ever been the type to drop the occasional F-Bomb.