Beware of "churlish" behavior at any time or anywhere

The best columnists I know and read on a regular basis write about things that they see or read that touches their own heart. If information lingers and burns in the writer’s heart, it will likely light a flame, or at least warm the heart of the reader when they see it on the printed page.

After all, that is what a column is — the personal opinion of the writer. My editor and publisher, Don Dodd, often defended his columnists and said they could pretty much write whatever was in their hearts or minds, with some guidelines of course, for publication and libel issues.

News reporting is entirely different. Those stories are about incidents that are newsworthy or the people making the news. The reporter writes the news and not his opinion. Writers and editors at The Examiner were often warned about “editorializing” or sharing personal opinions in news articles.

This is one reason those of us who write columns on a regular basis enjoy doing them so much. We get an idea, or in my case, I like to think that the dear Lord impresses on my heart something that would make for good writing or that would be a help to others as we go along through life. The Word of God is always a wonderful source for inspirational writing and for ideas for this type of column. Personal experience also plays into the writing from time to time as does the growth of an individual. We learn to rely on our “living” to give us our storylines and column ideas.

Yesterday around five in the afternoon, I had occasion to witness an incident in the busy Galveston Wal-Mart parking lot that left me, my husband, and several other motorists completely and totally speechless. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and I have never once in my life jumped out of my car and gotten involved in a would-be altercation between other people. I know better. I’m trained better after years of hard news reporting, but I did it anyway without thinking.

We had been fortunate enough to secure the very first parking space on Row 5 near the food entry of the big, busy store and the lot was nearly filled with afternoon shoppers. We completed our shopping and returned to our car, placed the packages in the trunk, got in, and Ted started to back out from the space. A very nice-looking, young man in a clean, white SUV was obviously waiting to turn into the spot we were vacating. Ted threw up his hand to acknowledge the man’s intention and he waved back. Kind of neighborly doings all the way around.

Ted backed out into the aisle and lo and behold, a small grey sports car whipped into the space from the opposite direction without any warning. The two young male occupants were laughing and pointing as if they had won a Kentucky Derby race. The two high-fived each other and jumped out of the vehicle heading toward the entrance of the store, laughing and jesting all the way.

The man in the SUV was instantly furious. He hopped out of his car and approached the two and said, “You saw me waiting for that space. Why did you do that? That was very rude of you.” The taller of the two men in the sports car made some derogative comment and sneered at the driver of the SUV. “Too bad, Buster, we got it, didn’t we? You go park your truck somewhere else,” said the driver of the sports car. They added some other language, which I will not quote here. Both men were continuing to laugh and thought that what they had done was very funny indeed. It looked as though the incident would come to blows or a free-for-all brawl.

I opened my car door and ran over to where the three men were standing. I said to the driver of the SUV who had been waiting patiently for our spot, “Hey, we all saw what happened, and you’re right, it isn’t funny at all, but the best thing you can do is let it go. This is not worth fighting over. Think about it. In a hundred years from now, who will know or care where any of us parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot? Those guys have acted ignorantly and it will come back to haunt them.” Both sneered at me for helping to defend the guy in the SUV. Two other shoppers walked up and said that they, too, had seen what happened. One suggested the SUV driver call the police or at least take down the tag number and report the incident.

Ted, who is a former policeman and detective, had walked over by this time and, he, too, pleaded with the man to just let it go. “You don’t want this on your record,” he said wisely. “Just let them go. They’ll get their due in time.” The man in the SUV told Ted, “You probably won’t believe this. I just got out of the hospital today from surgery because of a terrible traffic accident and I’m lucky to be alive. I needed some groceries and thought I could get in and out of here in a hurry, but you’re right, those two aren’t worth it. I’ll just go somewhere else.”

The incident seemed to be resolved and we left to return home.

My point in telling the story is that we never know what someone has had happen to them just prior to an encounter with us. The two young, rude guys thought that they were being very funny, when in reality, not only was what they did very dangerous, but it made life a lot more complicated for the man who was only trying to buy some groceries after being released from the hospital. His anger was near the surface for a lot of reasons.

In truth, I would have liked to seen the two young men pay for their bad choice and their rude actions, but it is not up to me, nor to the man driving the SUV. I honestly believe that God keeps score and that in some way, somehow, those two will pay.

The Bible refers to “churlish” behavior in 1 Samuel 25:3 (“but the man was churlish and evil in his doings”) Encarta Online Dictionary defines “churlish” as a characteristic of somebody who is ill bred or surly, sullen or miserly. The two guys in the sports car were certainly churlish in their behavior and could have really hurt someone seriously. It is a good reminder to keep our tempers under control and our actions above reproach.