Another thankless job I have

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. - Matthew 5:25

Two nights ago the family decides to go to Target to get some baby stuff that we didn't get at the shower, but instead received a gift card for. As we are getting the kids out of the car, there is a sudden commotion between my wife (on the passenger side) and the driver of the car parked next to us. Apparently, there is a scratch and a small dent on the door of the other car that wasn't there before she went to Target. The driver claims that it was our door wedged up against her door as she pulled away that caused this scratch and dent. My wife gets into an argument with the lady, who gets a phone call and drives just outside of the parking lot on a side street to field it. We go into Target and talk about it, and I mention that I want to keep an eye outside for a second since the lady didn't drive completely away. Sure enough, she pulls up to our car again.

I ran outside and knocked on the lady's window. We're both pleading our cases to no avail. Granted, I didn't see anything happen because I was on the other side of the car, but I still have to stick up for my wife. It was in the middle of all this that I finally hit the proverbial wall. I apologize to the lady, who really is more indignant about being told that she didn't see what she saw than anything else, and explain to her what's been going on with our family for the past few weeks, and tell her that we've been under a lot of stress and nerves are a bit more frayed than usual and tempers are shorter than usual. The lady relates some of her story to me (she has a son in Iraq), and we talk about that. I sympathize with the stress she is under and with the undue stress of now having to drive home in Tucson traffic in addition to everything that just happened in the parking lot. We chuckle over that, I introduce myself and ask for her son's name, and tell her (sincerely) I hope her son comes home soon. She thanks me and says she's not going to write down our license plate number anymore, and drives off after bidding me good night.

In short: I went out there and literally let it all hang out emotionally over a SCRATCH IN SOMEONE'S PAINT, which would have caused serious problems as we are having some car issues right now, and it would have resulted in serious legal and financial troubles.

I return to the store, tell my wife what happened, and immediately get into trouble because she thinks I went out there and blamed her for the damage to the lady's car. Which is clearly not the case, but I can't argue that. In fact, when I did argue that, I got the same dismissal that I usually get when my wife claims I'm not making any effor to understand her.

Argh.