Still the place to sit.......

When I was younger, travelling alone with my various jobs and regularly hit upon, I used to make it a practice to sit at the bar and ask the bartender to "protect" me from unwanted approaches by men who assumed I was a prostitute. Seriously, a woman in her twenties in a bar alone in the seventies was automatically a hooker. Anyway........

.....I was alone tonight for dinner (daughter ill). So, I wandered up the street to a local restaurant, went in and sat at the bar. What a safe and facinating place the barstool remains. First, the tv was on and that sparked an interesting conversation with the guys seated beside me. No one wanted to watch mixed martial arts, so we changed the channel and watched 'The Rocket'. Imagine their incredulity when I told them I used to watch Maurice Richard and "The Habs" on tv when I was a kid...the real "rocket". I think they thought they were chatting with their grandmother.

I learned these guys played jazz in the bar, learned that the drummer had acquired his trade in the armed forces, learned he had forgotten he was on tonight and missed his daughter's sixth birthday. When I told him my husband had actually played drums with The Beatles one night in England back in the day, he was very impressed. (That's a true story, by the way. B did play drums one night when Pete Best was too drunk to go on, before they became famous. Hmmmm....come to think of it, what if B had forgone his studies and become Ringo??) Anyway, they had to get up and sing for their supper and another guy sat down.

I remained fixated on the tv, in case someone thought I was some kind of desperate old bag with no life who hung out in bars accosting strangers. (Thank God I hadn't plastered too much harridan make up on.) But this young man promptly introduced himself to me. I detected a french accent and learned he was from Montreal. Chat, chat, chat.........what a charmer. He was in the movie business and made a ton of dough when Hollywood productions came to town. But, guess what? He has had rotten luck with women and now can't be bothered. "You can't even talk to women, they think you're harassing them," he lamented. Yes ladies, we've reduced ourselves to victims of harassment. At 41 years old, this charming, clean cut, well-heeled professional man can no longer be bothered to try and convince a woman he's not a stalker, a ripper or just a common garden variety male chauvinist pig.

Naturally, I offered my take on today's modern woman: "We've given away all our power by trying to be men," I said. "And guess what, we're still not men. We've just pissed off half the population by trying to work both sides of the street." He looked at me in amazement. "Why is that?" Beats me, I added, but they'll figure it out one day.

Vancouver is full of smarty pants, in charge young women holding forth in restaurants and bars. Just look around, I said. As I was leaving, I told him to wander down the street to the local church in the morning, if he wanted to find a young woman interested in building a family. He stood up, shook my hand and very politely thanked me for the conversation. Maybe I'll see him in Mass today?