Ah, thank you for the enlightenment. I'm not sure if I've been deliberately diverted from such a habit, I couldn't accuse anyone around me of it directly. Rather, for me it is a culture that thinks it already knows all the answers to questions posed.
I was fascinated by something in the story that is difficult to describe. So someone asks a rhetorical question, but the person asked actually ignores the rhetoric and tries to consider its true content. Here, you can't really feign interest in a question unless you actually experience it. Where one ignores an insult in a question or statement, but practices actual wondering. Without strategy.
As a child, I grasped the humorous stories of some writers in this way, and instead of being annoyed that those around me seemed incapable of practising such humour, I felt only the sheer inspiration of what was written take hold of me. I imitated the authors and wrote my own, naturally childlike stories.
The ability to retain a certain naivety, to wonder authentically, is potentially always there. But I always spoil it when I think that nothing needs to amaze me any more. Cynicism is then around the next corner and I might be tempted to give it preference.
For me, irritating someone means interrupting the moment of the usual and breaking out of the usual trajectory of how one communicates with each other. Of course, someone who stops to wonder can only be offended.
So, I assume, that you may not only have been shocked, but delighted as well?