Figuratively Fighting Fire With Fire

I may come off as the jerk in this one, though it sure didn’t feel that way at the time.

I got to the train station some forty minutes before my train was due, hoping for some relative peace. Since it was a public place, there was obviously a limit to the silence, but the station was pretty deserted. I sat down on the bench next to this other guy. (There was only one in the shade, and it was REALLY hot.) I soon realised he was listening to music from his cell phone, loud enough to bother me.

I contemplated moving, but I’d had quite enough of people forcing their music onto other people in public places. I looked around, saw that the place was deserted and, therefore, I wouldn’t disturb anyone else, and did something I’d fantasised about for a long time: I started blasting my own music.

The guy stopped his music. I stopped, too. Predictably, he then resumed, and so did I.

For the rest of the forty minutes, we were both forcing our music onto one another. Every time my track finished, I waited to see if he was still doing it, and when I heard that he was, I moved on to the next track. I paused whenever there were train station announcements. All in all, I was being very passive-aggressive but very obvious. I wasn’t even putting myself out; instead of a nice forty minutes of peace and quiet, I had forty minutes of my music.

When my train was announced, I got up and spoke to the guy.

Me: “I will leave you to disturb everyone else with your music by yourself.”

And I left before he could reply.

I like to think I was as considerate as possible in the circumstances. It sure felt good, though, to finally show an inconsiderate person how it felt.