Sergeant Kingdom (would I make that up?) was, to our surprise, sympathetic; we sat at his desk drinking the undrinkable coffee he offered us, trying to figure out if there was any way to compel Uber to help.
As Mr. Weber, 63, told his story to a hushed room of mostly gray-haired men and women here, there were sympathetic nods, but little surprise.
That they are helped by sympathetic white women will not surprise Taylor's fans, for she resists oversimplifying racial politics.
When I first began to have glimmers of this story, I thought that Marise would turn out to be more sympathetic than she is — the surprise in the story was to be that she and Valerie would actually be able to talk to each other.
I'm neither surprised nor overly sympathetic.
(I was actually surprised by how sympathetic some of the soldiers were - these so-called "few bad apples").
But they might be surprised at the sympathetic response: Suburban homeowners are so full of angst, guilt, despair and frustration over their bulging garages that they spent $800 million on garage organizing products last year, double the amount spent in 2000, according to the market research firm Packaged Facts.
To his surprise, he found a sympathetic ear in Robert Redford, who helped him to set up Moonstone, aimed at promoting a new independent vision.
To my surprise, I'm pretty sympathetic to the narrative, which seems to be saying that the mass-bureaucratic welfare state is a colossal misuse of resources.
To my grandmother's surprise, the saints seemed sympathetic; they'd been through worse versions of hell than she had.
