A Listener

A thing happened the other day. A friend of mine and I were heading home from an improv show on the subway, and we were talking plenty. It's a given that with me involved, the conversation was loud and potentially objectionable. If you haven't gleaned this yet, let me say that I have been criticised by strangers multiple times for talking too loud on a city bus, where the standards are pretty generous. Anyway, this wasn't like that exactly.

This was not a case of someone being sorry that I spoke. It's more that I was sorry someone was glad that I spoke. It went like this: At some point, my friend told me he'd bought some Groupon voucher for a restaurant we'd been to. He explained that he paid ten dollars for a twenty dollar voucher, and my brain had a problem with that. "Why," I asked him, "didn't they just give you a ten dollar voucher for free?"

His brain had a problem with my question, and he could think of no reply except to logically explain how the system of these vouchers works. It went in one ear and out the other. I didn't really understand it any better, but I was enjoying winding him up. "Or they could give you a five dollar voucher, and also give you five dollars in cash." Through this line of discussion, there were people around who could hear this. 

One, who I took to be a stoner or something of the kind, was enjoying it as much as I was, except that I don't know if he appreciated my sarcastic, comedic tone. He vocally agreed that what I said made sense, and I think that he might have meant it very earnestly. I later expressed amused frustration that someone of such character agreed with my expressed point of view. My friend agreed that it hadn't helped my case.