You may have seen variations of this scene yourself. An angry middle-aged mother in sweat pants, held shoppers in line while she vehemently berated a clerk, and demanding a price check on a four-ounce snack cup of rice pudding. Onlookers, who had plenty of time to speculate, posited that she was once a carefree young woman who would have been as mortified as her young son, if only she could have seen her own behavior later in life.
