Home Planet: Someone should have told them to park it

It started, as is so often the case, over nothing.

Two cars, drivers obviously in a hurry, pulled up to a parking place in the crowded lot at a busy medical clinic. One pulled in.

The loser didn’t take it well. She peeled into a space not far from the one she’d been vying for, and got out of her car – slamming the door behind her – just as the other driver got out of hers.

The war of words began.

Apparently it wasn’t enough to give a look of irritation or disgust. That wouldn’t get the point across. Instead she shouted. She swore and pointed her finger. She got down and dirty.

The other woman gave as good as she got. The air was thick with curses and vague, unfinished threats.

By this time the passengers were out of the car that had captured the parking space and they gathered around her defending the driver, shouting and gesturing. They were, by the way, a woman and her daughters.

The verbal sparring continued as they all walked into the building and entered the waiting room.

Finally, a woman in the room spoke up.

“There are children here,” she said. But no one paid any attention.

Eventually, not immediately, but when they were good and ready to let it go, the group of women dropped the debate.

The interesting thing, well, to me anyway, was that it was clear that at no point during the exchange had anyone been really furious or even inconvenienced. Both cars found places to park just feet from the building. But once the words started, nobody bothered to staunch the flow.

It was rage as sport. Fury as performance art. Wrath as public entertainment. In fact, at one point, everyone was grinning.

There was angry posturing. There were furious words and heated accusations. There was a lot of attitude.

No one was willing to back down and everybody had plenty to say.

It was all slightly ridiculous.

The game, apparently, was so much fun no one cared about the bystanders who didn’t want to play along. People like the children who took it all in with wide eyes. Or the patients who were sick and huddled in chairs and had to sit in the three-ring-circus full of shouting women.

Later, it occurred to me that there had been a group of smokers huddled at one end of the sidewalk, legally required to keep their distance so that the byproduct of their behavior wouldn’t be toxic to others.

But words hang in the air like smoke and can be just as unpleasant; just as unhealthy.

And in some cases, just as much a public nuisance or public threat.

Secondhand bad behavior stinks, too.