Cord-i-Fied, and Really Frustrated/Disgusted

Went to Best Buy just now with My Lovely Mother and bought myself an adapter ... just didn't want to be unplugged.

Before I picked up Mom, though, I had gone to Walmart for some dinner fixin's ... while standing (endlessly) in the checkout line, I started hearing some amazingly foul, amazingly LOUD foul, language coming from about 6 checkout lines down the way. Looked up -- all I could see were 5 really cute kids, the oldest maybe 9, ranging down to 3 that were still on wobbly legs ... and behind the cart, a very large, very grim-looking woman holding onto the cart handle and just verbally shredding those children.

"I told you twice to get that out of the cart, you dumb-ass punk!"
and
"What the fuck are you doing, Stupid?"
and
"I'm gonna beat your damn stupid ass if you make me say it again."

and so on.

Everyone, and I mean EVE!RY!ONE! in the store kinda stopped, turned and looked, but it was as if in slow motion -- none of us could take it in, could make our minds hear it and understand it, or comprehend who was on the receiving end of it.

I wasn't close enough to say anything. I couldn't see around other registers and displays and such to discern if anyone nearer to her attempted to say anything. But I could see those kids well enough, and they were oblivious to it, or used to it, and that upset me more than anything -- they were so used to it that they were capable of ignoring it, which is what they were doing, which is what was causing her to amp up in volume and level of expletives.

I pushed my cart out to my truck, put the groceries in it, sat down, and started to cry. I thought of those little faces, I thought of them looking and sounding like her in 10 years, I wondered who brought HER up and how ... I mean, subtracting judgment and quelling my feelings of repulsion & anger, there remained the very obvious question: what had been done to her in her youth, that she was so naturally, unselfconsciously, horrible like that to her own kids?

All the way home, I asked myself what I could've said. If I'd been direct and said anything like, 'Hey, that's a really crude and abusive way to talk to your kids," she more than likely would've directed a stream of it at me for meddling. So I pondered. What if I'd said, gently, 'Hey, are you all right? Could you use some help?' How would that have gone over? Would it at least have interrupted her for the few minutes from check-out to her vehicle? Would the little ones have had some mental breathing room, some clean-aired silence? Would they know the difference?

FUTILITY IS NOT SOMETHING I'M GOOD AT.