High Praise

I was waiting in the LRT metro station downtown yesterday reading my book. An "eccentric" old man walked by me and started talking loudly in a sing-song voice. I'm pretty good at ignoring such things (every single ride on public transportation in Chicago seemed to involve a similar encounter), and I couldn't really catch what he was saying. But I got the last word... lit-er-ary. I took it as a compliment!