The guy also thought he was making himself look smart, even witty, but to everyone else in the shop he had uncorked raving lunacy. The momentarily dumbfounded young woman at the order counter had offended him, he wished her to know how greatly. With each repetition, his question grew more heated. Give me another thirty seconds, you’ll learn all about obstreperous. Lady, you think I’m obstreperous now? This is what he was saying. Obstreperous? ObSTREPerous? OBSTREPEROUS? Ob-strep?-ER-ous? OBstreperous? His motive, for nothing actually comes from nowhere, soon became obvious. If you had to settle on one word to yell over and over in public, wouldn’t you pick something less cumbersome? Yet he kept at it, spinning those four lumpy syllables every possible way, as if trying them on for size. By the time he found his rhythm, he was about twice that volume and getting louder as he rolled along. He started out at a level just above ordinary conversation. Abruptly, with a manic indignation that seemed to come from nowhere, the man at the head of the line started uttering the word obstreperous. The loudest noises in the place were the tapping of laptop keys and the rustle of someone turning newspaper pages. I was standing in line at the Corner Bakery on State and Cedar, half a block down the street from my pretty brick townhouse, waiting to order a Swiss Oatmeal (muesli) or a Berry Parfait (granola), anyhow something modest. The great revelations of my adult life began with the shouts of a lost soul in my neighborhood breakfast joint.
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