We were standing in a painfully slow grocery line when a man suddenly pushed past my pregnant wife, Karol, hard enough to make her stumble against our cart. My first instinct was to confront him, but Karol stopped me before I could say a word. The man offered a careless apology and acted as though nothing had happened. Karol simply smiled, reached into our groceries, and picked up a ripe tomato. Before I understood what she intended to do, she tossed it toward him, and it landed squarely against his shirt with a messy splat. The entire checkout line went silent as he stared down at the red stain in disbelief. Karol calmly turned back to the conveyor belt and continued unloading our groceries as if nothing unusual had happened.

As we walked out of the store, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. Growing up, my mother always told me, “What happens, happens,” but I had never been particularly good at letting rude behavior go unanswered. Karol was different. She didn’t spend the next twenty minutes arguing, shouting, or allowing one stranger to ruin her afternoon. Her unusual little response made her point, and then she moved on. Walking beside her toward the parking lot, I realized that carrying anger around often gives a rude stranger far more power than they deserve. Sometimes the best ending to an unpleasant moment is simply refusing to let it follow you home.