Bullet to the Brain 2-2-10

I found Anders to be extremely witty and kind-of funny. He completely took the woman's comment about the teller out of context and exaggerated it to make her look like an idiot by putting the subject up there with genocide and unforgivable sins. Even during the robbery he continued with his criticism by saying, "There you go. Justice is done." Although I see the humor, I believe it comes from suppressed feelings he incurred in the past. The comment made to the woman in front of him was the first time we learned of his opposition to anything anybody told him. He actually agreed with her but took the part of antagonizing because he could. He did the same with the robbers. Every time they told them (the customers, including Anders) to shut there mouths, Anders would do the opposite and talk.
I think the last thought he had tells part of the story. It said he was "strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness..." I believe he sought after the unexpected from that point forward and was let down when he didn't find it. This is why he broke it off with his wife. "She exhausted him with her predictability..."
Still, i think it goes deeper than just predicting things or not. Anders simply doesn't like his life. He doesn't like his job because it reminds him of his lack of accomplishment. " He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate's name on the dust jacket of a novel (the cover)..." Dust jacket was just a way to belittle the books that "he did not remember the pleasure of respect" to. He regarded the books on his desk with boredom and dread and grew angry at the writers writing them. Also, when his daughter was born he couldn't enjoy it because a lady killed herself. The one thing that did give him the "shivers", memorizing poems, to impress himself ended up being meaningless.
If he had just asked the boy on the field to repeat himself this emotionless man would have been different. Because he didn't ask he became what he feared that hot day. "The others will think he's being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar." This explains his sarcasm, construed as being a jerk, and his hated job of continuously criticising grammar in books.