I walked into Barnes & Noble, immersed myself fully into the pretension of my environs, and proceeded to read The House of Morgan, a book about the meteoric rise of the Morgan banks.* It was interesting stuff.
* Nine-year-old Aaron wants to give me the beatdown for getting into stuff like this and calling it interesting. But if we got into a fight, I'd definitely win. At 9, I weighed 60 pounds. Seriously, it wouldn't even be close.
Just then, a confused-looking man walks in, sits at a table, and immediately loads YouTube onto his MacBook. After fielding a few phone calls and completely spoiling the plot of the new Sherlock Holmes movie for me,* he proceeded to begin loading videos for his enjoyment.
*His quote: "I liked the movie, thought Robert Downey was great, but I knew that the ******** was the villain the whole time." Thanks man. Seriously.
He watched videos - at full volume - for about three minutes, much to the chagrin of a group of timid yuppies who needed a hero. It was my time.
I let fly a couple of stifled coughs and gave some dirty looks, but apparently this fellow was oblivious to subverted social cues.
So I did what I had to do. I walked up behind the guy and watched the video over his shoulder, chuckling at appropriate moments. It took him a shockingly long time to realize what I was doing, but then he responded as expected: "What do you think you're doing?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. If you don't want us all to watch your videos, then maybe you shouldn't make all of us listen to them."
Scene: As Aaron returns to his seat, a bald 22-year-old with thick rimmed glasses and scarf, reading Kurt Vonnegut and a book about veganism, places his hands together, bows and issues a mock applause. The day saved, Aaron does what any superhero would do. He sits down and reads about early 20th-Century bank deregulation and its affect on the global commodities market.*
* Just like the Punisher would have done.
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