It started in the car, as so many things do.

She, 55, and he, 77, were sitting in his car outside his home, pounding back a few cold ones (although they were probably actually lukewarm) as, I suppose, one does. I personally don't know anyone who does, but I found this story online at the Chicago Tribune, so it must be true.

I kind of thought it was funny at first, wondered at what must've been an odd sight. This not-young couple, sitting in the car in front of a home like a couple of teenagers trying to fuel themselves up as much as possible before the porch lights went on and curfew was called.

But the story took a bit of a not-so-funny turn.

Because he was drinking her beer, you see. And while she apparently tolerated this nonsense for awhile, she kind of lost it when he ungraciously reached for her last one. So they argued, the story reported.

Now this part I get. I mean there's nothing worse than someone who's just so inconsiderate that they do things without, well, considering someone else's feelings. Right?

Oh, I suppose drinking a person's last beer isn't the end of the world. I suppose there are worse things a person could do.

But let's consider this: Who knows what kind of day the woman had? Maybe she'd been stuck in a long, sweaty line at the grocery store earlier that afternoon.

Maybe the one and only cashier had been wasting all kinds of time making googly eyes at someone's baby instead of ringing up the baby's mother's four items. Could be.

Could also be that when said cashier was done filling that empty, babyless void in her life, she needed a price check on one of the woman's four items. Which kept the waiting customers shifting and groaning even more.

And pushing. Not big pushing where you can push back, but that slight touching of their cart to your butt. Because it's not bad enough to be waiting in some crazy long line for some woman at the front to finish fulfilling some fantasy she has of becoming Mother Theresa of Grocery Land, but now you've also got to contend with that person behind you who believes that if their cart inches up another eight millimetres, they'll get their stuff checked out faster.

And heaven help the person who tries to jump the line. You know the one, that one person who thinks that if they very subtly move their cart ahead four people, they can skip up to it as if they'd always been four people ahead in line. Not realizing that everyone in that line has nothing better to do than watch them make this surreptitious move and, should they actually attempt it, would pounce on them quicker than a mouse in a hawk sanctuary.

Add to that maybe the woman was hungry. I had this conversation with someone recently -- I'd been waiting in just such a line and was starving at the time, which makes everything about 70 times worse.

As I watched the cashier playing with this baby, I fantasized about leaping over everyone's heads across the counter and pinning her to the ground, demanding she stop playing with the damn baby and ring up our stuff so we could all go home and get a snack.

And while I understood that behaving this way would probably garner a visit from the police, I also thought that, should I be arrested and taken to the station and processed and the whole bit, I'd still probably get a sandwich quicker than I would standing in that line, waiting for this woman to finish cooing.

Get. A damn. Dog.

Anyway, I'm just saying, we don't know what was going on in this person's head. We have no idea what her day was like. And we don't know what other things could have been going on in her relationship with this fellow.

What we do know is that she didn't take kindly to the fact that he took her last beer.

Because she pulled out a knife she just happened to have with her and stabbed him. To death. She then got out of the car, yelled something about how she'd just killed the guy, got back in the car and finished her beer.

Needless to say, she has been charged with first-degree murder. And clearly, she has some kind of psychological problem.

So, not funny. Would've been a way better story if she'd just slugged him.

snadler@thespec.com