Breaking the silence.

A man overtook me walking to work, and I noticed his backpack was open. So I though I should tell him. But I did it awkwardly, it took many moments for me to pull my ipod out of my ears and form words with my brain and mouth. It's talking to a stranger, it's breaking that zone everyone locks themselves into with their morning commute, I felt weird and unnatural, plus it was probably the first words I'd spoken that day so my voice was still getting out of bed. "Your backpack is open" came out all slow, blurry and singsong, at an inappropriate volume—I sounded like a one of those talking dogs on youtube. He took like 5 seconds to understand me as well, before checking his backpack.