Practice? At regulating emotions? "Where do you go to get practice like that?" And then he kind of thinks, 'Maybe from actually talking to other people, and it comes naturally from that,' but doesn't verbally correct himself just in case there is a place to go to learn.

"...you have a point, I think. Or a few points," he admits, a moment later. "It's just that I didn't think a lot about it before--" (No, it's that he tried not to think about it, and pushed every what-if out of consciousness because it was too easy to just sink into it like wet sand.) "--but being around other people just...makes it easy to think about all kinds of new things." It's not a particularly wise comment-- if anything, it's just plain obvious-- but he feels like he's discovering a lot. "Ah-- thank you for listening, by the way. And being encouraging..."