"I will tell you my story," he said. "I will tell you my story and you will sympathize because I can tell by looking at your face that your are sympathetic. You have a sympathetic face. My story is the story of a man's tragedy. It is the story of a blighted life. It is the story of a woman who would not forgive. It is the story..."
"I have to leave at 8:30," I said, "and if it's the story about the monkey and the nuts, I've heard it and it's vulgar."
"Sympathy," he said. "A man who has suffered the tragedy that I have suffered, requires sympathy."
"Let your days be full of joy. Love the child that holds your hand. Let you wife delight in your embrace. For these are the concerns of man," I said, taking liberties with the Epic of Gilgamesh.
"I have no wife and I have lost the woman who means all the world to me," he said.
"Listen," I said.
"Sure," he said taking a sip of his coffee.
"I walk the face of the earth like an ant walks on the surface of water," I began.
"Do ants walk on water," he asked?
I raised a hand as this was no time for side issues.
"As if the slightest misstep might send me straight through the surface and into the depths below. Not the depths of the ocean but the inner-most depths of the mind. It's scary down there."
"What's so scary about it?"
"Well," I said, "just yesterday when I was thinking about the rising tide of heinous skulduggery and political weasel-osity in the adjoining kingdom of the United States and how much the people need compassion and good will, I cleared my throat to sound the call to sanity when a cargo-van of fear, grief and anger came careening around a corner of my mind and plowed through a row of garbage cans. The driver came out flailing and swinging and shouting."
"You don't see that everyday," he said.
"No you don't," I said.
"But so what?"
"Well," the driver was me," I said.
"Ah," he said. "I gotta go."
"Have a nice Mayan apocalypse," I called after him because I had not meant to offend.