I stopped pumping to stand there pondering the meaning of it all. My first thought was obvious. "Dude," I wanted to say, "give me a break with the Brahms."

Then I realized something: The bad thing about having an epiphany is not knowing what to make of it. Like Mr. Jones in Bob Dylan's famous "Ballad of a Thin Man," there was something happening, and I didn't know what it was.

Clearly, this moment represented some sort of shift in our culture. But … what? If an old guy is blasting classical music, does that mean that the blasting-music thing has so permeated society that it is accepted? Or does it mean that the blasting-music thing is passé?

I was, it seemed to me, observing the very personification of a tipping point, and I was unable to discern the direction of the tip.

People get rich making sense (or making you believe they are making sense) of this kind of stuff. So I tried to make sense of it in hopes that I would get rich.

It occurred to me that I was not encountering as many music-blasting cars as I had a few years ago. Was this true? I wondered. If so, why? It just didn't make sense to me that there should be a decrease in the activity, given that blasting music is easy and fun, and that there has been no reduction in CDs or males.

But maybe it was true. After all, research clearly shows that the adoption of some greater social trend by an old guy is proof that the trend is officially over. Here, then, was empirical evidence to support my perception about less music-blasting in cars. (I have no idea what empirical means, but to get rich, you need words like that.)

On the other hand, it didn't strike me that the invasion of public space, which music-blasting represents, had abated at all. In fact, people blather louder than ever on their cell phones while sitting in restaurants or shopping at supermarkets or even lounging around at home, their conversations bigfooting everything around them. By that measure, then, if the old guy was empirical of anything, it was of loudness being a tolerated part of our lives. Ergo, the trend was not over; it was ingrained.