Good grief, I cannot quite believe what happened today.
Summer here and last day of a week at the beach with another family (total 2 adults and 4 children).
It has been blissful, beautiful spot, fabulous weather and so much fun.
This morning I was in my room packing when my friend burst in and let rip at my son, 7, saying he was very rude and he needed to go with her right away.
I asked what was wrong and she said he had removed the strap from her daughter's body board. I was confused as actually he had loaned his strap and had asked for it back. Turns out he had asked the mother, she had said yes and he had then removed the strap believing he was doing the right thing, but had mistakenly taken the strap from the sibling's board.
I said, "OK well you give him his strap and he'll give you yours," fully believing it to be a minor misunderstanding, the sort your children have over whose turn or whatever.
She stormed off, I spoke to my son and worked out the misunderstanding, then I went to her to explain why he had taken the strap. I tried so hard to be kind and reasonable, but she hit the roof. She said I was being ridiculous, that he had taken her daughter's strap and repeated that he was "very rude" to have taken it back. She was shouting and really lost the plot. She said her dd's strap was missing and it must have been my son who had taken it because "he was up early" and he "needed to tell the truth about where it was".
I am afraid I saw red at this point. I said her dd had lost her strap, my son had been kind to loan his and she was being very unfair to accuse him of taking anything or lying about it.
I also said that a replacement strap would probably cost about $3 and it was really sad to be arguing about something so trivial.
She then ordered her children into the car, came back into the house and said she hoped I was glad for ruining her holiday and that she was leaving and she would not be helping to clean the house.
So I spent the next 1.5hrs cleaning and left feeling shocked, angry and really just bewildered.
I feel as if I don't really know what happened or why, and that she has been completely irrational.
Can anyone tell me whether I have missed something? She was SO so angry, and so sure she was right that I keep wondering what on earth I did wrong. And how anyone could get into such a fury over such a small thing.
In my view the week had gone really well but now I am guessing that she was already upset about something and the strap was in some way her last straw. But genuinely in the dark here.