In the cutthroat tabloid wars of America's most competitive media market, scoops are the currency by which newspapers live and die. Today, the New York Post has scored what may prove to be the definitive journalistic coup in its centuries-long battle for supremacy in Gotham's newspaper market: the EXCLUSIVE story of one lady being mad at another lady, in the supermarket.

By combing court records and interviewing participants for firsthand accounts of the chaos, the Post's intrepid legal correspondents have reconstructed the dramatic events that took place in an Upper West Side Trader Joe's one fateful day last winter. What cruel pagan god brought together Marcella Caprario and her husband Bill, and Cathleen London and her teenage son, there, at the frozen food case, by the frozen Pad Thai? Any of an infinite number of variables could have made these two star-crossed groups of shoppers miss one another that day, but instead, they ended up there, grabbing for Pad Thai, in the same place at the same time, neither one knowing that this moment would, months later, cause their pictures to appear in the New York Post. It's almost as if Allah was gazing down upon them with a sly smile tugging at the edges of his lips; that Zeus had fashioned a lightning bolt just for them; that Harold, the Norse god of frozen foods, had come out of retirement to meddle in human affairs once again, for old time's sake. Marcella Caprario and Cathleen London entered that store as mere shoppers; but they soon found themselves as actors in a thriller that would transfix readers of the June 14, 2011 New York Post, causing discussion and debate throughout the Tri-State area, and, indeed, around the world, through the wonders of commenting in "cyberspace." Two women; two families; one nation, under god; one packet of frozen Pad Thai; and only one newspaper—the New York Post—with enough gumption, grit, savvy, and drive to painstakingly recreate the perilous encounter that ensued for the benefit of you, the public, the always-voracious masses, hungry to be sated with your daily dose of human misery. A story, yes, of conflict; but also one of wonder, in which a mind-boggling confluence of randomly acting humans come together to produce something grand enough to make each and every one of us stop—if only for a moment—and admire its luminosity: a New York Post exclusive.

So what happened was Marcella Caprario slapped Cathleen London after her son got fresh with Bill, who was trying to get some Pad Thai out of the freezer.

Only in New York, kids.

[NYP. Photo: Shutterstock]