The car easing from the street into the gas station, blasting music, did not strike me at first as a tipping point.

I was just pumping gas, wondering if the $147 in my wallet would cover the quarter of a tank I was getting, when the epiphany began to unfold.

First, I noticed that the car was a top-down convertible.

It takes a Certain Type of Person to blast his music so loud that the street shakes, windows shatter, and pedestrians clutch their chests, mistaking pounding bass notes for a heart attack. But it takes a Special Kind of Certain Type of Person to do it in a top-down convertible.

While the garden-variety Certain Type of Person can act like, "What? It was loud?" when someone at a stoplight looks over with a sneer on his face, a guy in a top-down convertible, aka a Special Kind, can't pretend. He doesn't even attempt to try.

While a Certain Type of Person enjoys his music loud, he is, believe it or not, at least cognizant of the world around him. A Special Kind is unencumbered by a regard for others.

As I squeeze the gas pump and watch the convertible pull into the station, I wonder just what kind of guy is a Special Kind. But, of course, I know exactly what kind of guy he is. So do you. We know that he is, well, first and always, a he. Second, we know that he is young. Third, we know he is testosteronic, a Bowflex on wheels.

So imagine my surprise when the guy who climbed out of that convertible was - and I am not exaggerating - roughly 73 years old. He was a trim, ­distinguished-looking gentleman whose neatly cut white hair showed from beneath his handsome beige baseball cap, which matched his sharply creased beige slacks. His entire demeanor suggested he was a person who had just come from a rigorous reading session at the library.

Nor was the music washing over me in a tidal wave of sound rap or rock. It was classical.