OK, I feel awful and I'm losing sleep over this but I have no clue what I should have done, or what I should do in the future. This happened on Wednesday night...
DH and I still had not found dreidels so we ran to Target because someone suggested it. We also needed slippers for the kids. So we go to the shoe section and I'm looking at slippers, there is this family with a mother, either her friends or her two sisters, and her two sons. One of the sons was sitting in the cart whining, (one of those carts with two seats not where they are sitting in the actual cart part), and the other son was standing next to the cart, with his hand on the cart. The sister or friend of mom says, "you need to make him sit in the cart, you already told him to". The mother then says, "you better get into the cart or I'm gonna beat the s**t out of you." Well, honestly, though I thought it was crass, I know that in our family we threaten to hang our children from the ceiling fan and noone takes it seriously, it's just a funny thing we say. So, though it bothered me, I didn't take it seriously. We finally found the dreidels and went to check out.
At the checkout line this same woman was two people behind me. Her one son was sitting in the cart (same one) and her other son was standing looking at the endcap, he wasn't touching it and was standing right next to the cart. So, I'm checking out and dh is loading the bags into the cart (of course we ended up buying more than we planned). The lady looks at her son and says, "if you don't get over here I'm going to pull your hair". OK so I'm thinking, no way this woman is serious. She goes to her son and wraps her hand into his hair and pulls him over to the cart. As soon as she lets go, he tries to hide from her and she grabs his hair again.
I was standing there in complete shock and confusion. Firstly, we were in the checkout line so how in the world would the police get there in time if I called them. Secondly, we are new to this area and noone else seemed to even bat an eye at what happened, so would the police have even gotten involved if noone seemed to care that this woman was doing this. Thirdly, I have no clue who she was, I did consider watching her and trying to get her license plate number, but dh didn't see it and by the time I explained what happened to him we were already leaving the parking lot (we were running late so he was kind of rushing). But I'm losing sleep. If she acts like that in public what might be happening at home. I mean she wasn't frustrated or upset when she said these things, she just said them very matter of fact. If she was acting out of frustration then I would understand it more, but this was calm cruelty. What in the world should I have done? DH said that if he had seen it he would have looked at her and said, "what the h*** do you think you are doing?" OK and I have to admit, I majorly non-confrontational. So what should I have done, I don't want to find myself in this situation again. I am actually hoping I run into this lady again just so I can see if this is normal behavior for her or if she just seemed calm but was really at the end of her rope.
