Jealousy: Among the worst of human emotions.

Jealousy is a terrible thing.

I will preemptively tell you that I am taking the liberty of assuming the subject of this story rammed her car into her husband's car because she was jealous.

News reports say that Leticia Guerrero of Idaho Falls was arrested after she ran her car, multiple times, into her husband's vehicle. Had her husband been the only occupant, I would have assumed anger. Had her husband and three kids been in the car, I would have considered insanity as a motive. Her husband and three kids were in the car, but there was a fifth person, which makes jealousy the chief suspect of motivators.

It was her ex husband's new girlfriend sitting in the passenger seat.

I won't even begin to defend Leticia's actions. (I'm not sure why I feel like I can properly call her by her first name, other than to say perhaps I feel an odd kinship with her.) Some of us may have to hearken back to high school, or even junior high, to dust off the memory of romantic jealousy. The sad fact is that jealousy was powerful enough then that most of us can quickly dust off those memories.

I have a theory that we all have a little kid inside of us. A snot-nosed, greedy, tantrum-throwing kid who thinks he owns everything under the sun. If we don't get control of the inside brat, he takes over. He's particularly posessive of positive love and attention. Throw in a little drama, insecurity and co-dependence, and you have the recipe that can cook even the sanest of souls into a criminal.

Referring to my third paragraph, I want to revise my thoughts, mid-blog post. I eliminated anger and insanity as motives earlier. Actually jealousy is anger and insanity. And more. Sort of like when you mix two flavors -- say orange and chocolate -- you get a whole new flavor. Jealousy is a lot like that. It's not one single emotion. It's a mix of a few ugly ones.

Not that I'm a guy who thinks we should be easy on criminals, nor do I think a woman who would ram a car containing her three children has any reasonable excuse. But there's that little nugget of empathy inside me, created out of those dusted off memories, that gives me pause to consider the pain of a tortured soul driven to do something stupid.

What I hope will happen, which won't happen, will be that the husband will be so impressed by the intensity of this ex-wife's emotion that he'll ditch the new babe, ask for his ex to come back, make again the home intact, and give three scared kids a mom and dad they deserve.

But that's nearly as unrealistic as the little jealous brat inside all of us. But we can always hope.