They Said They Tripped. You Said They Weren’t Looking.
Someone tells you they tripped on the sidewalk. Before they finish, you have said, “You must not have been looking.” You meant it like a weather report. They heard a verdict. When they say so, you replay the sentence and find nothing in it. You did not raise your voice. You were not angry. What you said was possibly true. That gap – between the sentence that left you and the one that arrived – is not evidence of a mean streak. It has a mechanism, and the mechanism is mostly timing.