Having a relaxing sunbathe in the park. A man goes past dribbling a football and says to me ‘They’ve lost a plane’, pointing over at a father and son. I said ‘Oh dear’, not really knowing what I was supposed to say, but being polite anyway.
He said ‘Yes; it’s a big one as well. They were flying it and it just disappeared over there somewhere’. I made some sympathetic noise and said I hadn’t seen it (assuming that was what he was trying and failing to ask me).
‘The kid was crying’, he continued. He then looks over at them again and says to me ‘Yes, he’s CRYING’. I said, ‘Oh, what a shame’.
Father and son, arguing about whose fault it was, go off into the bushes to look for it. The man with the football puts it down and goes over and says something to them, following them into the bushes (presumably to help them look).
It dawns on me that he was trying to ask me to help to look too. Why the hell didn’t he just ask? What’s the point of desperately trying to hint at it instead? It’s the same as people who make endless loud sighs and huffing noises if they want to get past you, getting more and more frustrated, but wouldn’t say ‘excuse me’ even with a gun to their head.
Why???