1217 words

Thankfully, rural towns and regions in Canada are familiar territory. After all, all of the best dive sites are in remote or near lightly populated areas. One learns to try to be as invisible or forgettable as possible while in such places. This is a tall ask for those who are a visible minority or if they drive a rare vehicle. The smaller the population and the smaller the footprint of the town, one cannot afford to make a bad impression. For the first time last week, I witnessed a local making a bad impression on a visitor, me, and it was soon something that she regretted.

A small group of my friends, all hailing from different cities, decided that it had been too long since we all broke bread together. It also helped that one of their birthdays was fast approaching. This time, we chose a small tourist town during their offseason, for the last thing we wanted to do was spend time in traffic on our day off. I got into town a couple of hours early in order to scout out our potential meeting points and venues for lunch. I was not content with online reviews, for they would not be representative of the offseason. With ample time on my hands and with wind gusts surpassing ninety kilometres per hour, I decided to park my rear end in a Starbucks and catch up on my morning newspapers.

“Could somebody help us with the door,” pleaded an obscured woman’s voice directly ahead of me.

I looked up from my notebook to see a tourist with two Venti beverages in her hands and an expression on her face which read, “I have no idea who said that, I have no idea what those words meant, and I really should have at least learned the word ‘help’ in English before boarding that plane.” In one motion, I leaped up, capped my pen while covering the twelve feet to the entrance, and held the door open for the tourist. The poor thing was so embarrassed that she did not make eye contact or even say thank you. I quietly told her, “M’sai Haakeih” in her native Cantonese, albeit in a horrible accent, and she looked up with a soft smile as she rejoined her large group.

“My goodness, your hair is perfect,” said the same voice who asked for assistance with the door. Funnily enough, she and her friend were seated right next to the door while I had covered the twelve feet from my table. Did I close that gap that quickly? Surely not, I thought, for within the time it took for her to ask for assistance, she could have held the door open herself. “Were you just born perfect?” she asked with a predatory smile from which her friend shied away. Her friend’s expression had seen this before many times over the years, and she was visibly disgusted by it.

“I’ll be sure to tell my mother you said that,” I replied with a nod and a quick smile before returning to my table. The entire way back, I could feel her razor eyes burning a hole into my glutes.

Thankfully, one of my friends arrived shortly after, and the lady whose stalking eyes I had been avoiding since I sat down had decided not to pursue me any further, at least for the time being. Unlike my friends, I was staying in town for a couple of days, and a notion of dread washed over me. There are only a handful of restaurants and cafes open in this town. I was bound to bump into her again during my stay.

Was I being too hard on her? When you have been on this planet for a handful of decades and have led a full life, you get a sense of the quality of the person next to you. This is especially true if they are making a pass at you. The first tell was that she, or her friend, did not open and hold the door open for the overwhelmed tourist. Confirmation of her poor character arrived as she and her friend started to leave. While her friend struggled to decipher which waste bin to toss her empty cup, she left the venue, all the while staring at me as if I were prey. Sure enough, on her table was her empty cup lid being stained by her bright red lipstick.

Not throwing out your garbage or returning your shopping cart are some of the most basic ways to breach our common social contract – to feel entitled enough not to clean up after ourselves. The next evening, our paths crossed again, and when asked what I was doing that night, I told her the truth: I was looking forward to dining alone before heading to my hotel. A sense of confusion followed her look of dejection as she expected me to follow along with whatever she was planning to lay out in front of us.

Would I have entertained having a drink for the bare minimum of a chat with her if she opened the door for the tourist or cleaned up after herself? The chances would not have been zero, but still in the very low single digits due to our age gap. Being thoughtful and considerate are the most attractive qualities in a person, especially as we get older.

Globally, divorce and separation rates have been accelerating since the pandemic, and more people are deciding to stay single and childless. As we age, we run the additional risk of taking in a spouse or common-law couple and losing half of our homes and earnings. Even if we make a pass on someone in the hopes of spending one night with them, not being polite and considerate is a surefire way to ensure that we will go home alone. Being decent and not entitled are fast becoming the most important traits we can show others as we age, for every human we bring into our lives in an intimate manner presents a litigious risk. Some, like myself, would have said that this is the case for any age, and this is true. However, the risk this presents as we get older only accumulates with our growing assets. So, the next time you want to ask someone out on a date or buy them a drink, ensure you are a decent human being. The only people whom I have come across who find entitled assholes to be attractive are miserable humans themselves, and who wants to take them on as a risk moving forward?

Epilogue:

After we made our way to the local pub, my friends hilariously let out a hearty laugh. “What,” asked my friends as we dove into our second round of drinks.

“Seriously, the most attractive trait in another person is if they do a lot of sound effects while telling me about their day,” I started laughing uncontrollably, realizing how ridiculous this sounded, even though it was true.

My mind wandered to the encounter an hour earlier, and I wondered if her chances would have improved if she had made a door-screeching noise or something. I kept this thought to myself as we continued to ridicule how absurd a human I was.