“I think I just met the happiest person in the world!”, Aran groaned, looking at me with a pained look while dramatically letting himself fall down on my sofa.

“Yeah”, I agreed, “what a moody jerk.”

“Really though, why couldn’t he just let us be! Oh, but you can’t ride your bike on the sidewalk”, he mimicked the elderly man who had snarled at us earlier. “There’s a fucking motorway next to us, so NO, sir, I WON’T use the goddamn street! Like, that’s why on one likes old people!”

I nodded, unsure what to say.

While I didn’t share his opinion I didn’t want to start a fight over it. We had already had more than enough fights in the last months, so I wouldn’t strain our relationship more than necessary. Aran wasn’t even behaving that irrational right now, so I guessed it was okay to not tell him what I was thinking.

Still, it was hard for me to be angry at the man. While I wished that he didn’t take out his anger on others - especially children and teenagers - I also couldn’t image that he was leading a happy life himself.

Maybe he was all alone, with no one to cheer him up when he was sad and lonely.

Or maybe he was married but they were always angry themselves, thus making him angry, too.

Or maybe…

“I know what you’re thinking”, Aran interrupted my thoughts in a serious tone, now sitting up again “But it really doesn’t matter much. Why he’s a ‘moody jerk’, I mean. In the end, he takes out his anger on people who didn’t do shit to him all the same. He doesn’t deserve your concern.”

“But he does deserve someone’s concern”, I insisted, “everyone does.”