Laughing out loud out loud out loud?
Maybe he was dictating it.
Typical conversation:
Stranger: Where are you from?
Me: Albany.
Stranger: Where’s that?
Me: New York.
Stranger: Do you have any trees there?
Me: It’s Upstate.
You’d be surprised. I’ve told this story before, but it’s useful…
When I attended college in western NY, I was eating lunch with an international student (I think he was from China) and we were talking about our plans for the night. I mentioned that I was thinking of going to a baseball game (I was referring to the local minor league team). He then asks me if I’m able to visit Yankee Stadium often because in his mind, NYS = NYC = NY Yankees. He didn’t seem to realize that we were sitting hundreds of miles from NYC.
On the other hand, most of the times I’ve been to Albany proper, I have seen few trees except in art museums (where’s theres a lot of trees thanks to the Hudson River School paintings.) Looking at an overhead photo shows a lot of trees, but I guess I never saw them.