Tonight after dinner with my parents, I met two of my friends for ice cream. One of my friends came with her boyfriend, who for the last two years of their relationship has pretty much been a mute. He rarely says anything. He just kind of stands or sits there and eats. He’ll occasionally look at you and seem like he’s listening to you, but you’ll probably never know because he rarely verbally communicates. My friend has expressed annoyance to him and says he needs to make an effort to talk to her friends like us (because that really needs to be stated). So tonight, he actually said one or two full sentences. And our second friend gave him credit for it afterwards.

“He was actually a bit more talkative than he normally is,” second friend remarks. “He said like two things.”

You know the bar is set so low that it’s nearly below ground when you’re complimenting someone for speaking two sentences over the course of an hour.