The Argument That Was None of Our Business

April fourteenth. There were two people at the bus shelter across from the coffee cart, and they were arguing. Not the low-hissing kind of argument you look away from, the private kind, this was fully committed, voices out, neither one of them winning in a visible way, and the subject of it was so particular and so earnest that Simone and I just stopped walking.

I don't want to say what it was about exactly, because it loses something in the telling. But I will say it involved food classification, a line of reasoning that was honestly not without merit on both sides, and one person using the word "objectively" four times in ninety seconds. We were there for the whole thing.

Simone had her coffee cup halfway to her mouth for a solid two minutes without drinking from it. I still had my jacket over my arm. At some point she said, very quietly, without looking at me: "I think I agree with the shorter one." I did not agree. I said so. This led to a smaller, quieter version of the same argument happening between us on the walk to the bus stop, which felt correct.

I've been thinking about this for two weeks. Not because it matters, it absolutely does not matter, but because there is something I like about people who are that committed to a position on a thing that has no stakes. It's almost a form of sincerity. The shorter one, by the way, was wrong.

The moment we both forgot we were just getting coffee

Post-incident debrief, in progress