My sister has a habit of focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all other stimuli. I mean if she is watching a TV show, the neighbors' house could be burning down and she won't notice a thing until the next ad break comes along (hyperbole, but you get the point).
The result is that she tends to let her kid do a lot of destructive and dangerous things while she's paying attention to something else. So today, she was zoned into her cell phone while her kid proceeded to pull things out of my kitchen cabinets, making a huge mess and endangering himself in the process (my house is not baby-proofed, and he was grabbing food processor accessories).
I watched for a moment, hoping that my sister would step in and stop her son. But she remained locked into her cell phone, oblivious to the world around her. My rage mounted as I watched her kid tossing around my property unchecked, and finally I shouted "My God, woman, is there something wrong with your thalamus?!"
Startled out of her state of oblivious concentration, she only looked at me trembling and said meekly, "I...I'm sorry...come on Tyler, let's go home. We're not welcome here."
Now I feel bad, and wonder if I should have handled it differently. Was I out of line? Should I apologize?