"It’s fine," John insisted, speaking to Richard from across a cultural divide that never got any easier to navigate. The idea being that even if John’s seat were positioned too far forward—limiting his legroom and reducing his level of physical comfort—the mere act of scooting it back a few inches was, by midwestern standards, a gratuitous waste of energy as well as an implicit admission that the scooter was the sort of person who could not handle a little bit of trouble.