Choosing between ignorance and being ignored

His voice, which had always been noise, was suddenly music.

One day my tuning to him just changed, at the drop of a hat.

Now I picked up on everything, the subtle movement that never stopped, a bouncing of his legs and tapping of his pen on the table. It didn't annoy me, because I had never noticed it before. He tried to act all nonchalant about sports, but the way his feet and thoughts were always moving, I knew he was somewhat athletic and poured all of his talent into one thing. Always staring out the window and never fully present, he said he'd rather be outside doing what he wanted to do than watching a presentation or working from a book. I agreed. That was before he came off as a racist jerk, making fun of my friends, calling them fake. I felt useless, so to cover it up I laughed in his face and left. His voice became another noise to me again; one that was harder to drown out than all the others, but eventually dissipated in the swelling sea of a thousand more.