Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Guy At The Bar

Today was my first outing following my second knee surgery of the year, and let me tell you, it was fantastic!  Ok, so I’m exaggerating a bit, but it was nice to get out of the house and do a little shopping with my mom.  It took me almost two hours to get ready to leave the house (bum leg makes me slow) and by the time we’d finished with our first stop I needed a break so we decided to go to lunch (Chinese food, yum!).

My seat at our table gave me a great vantage point to see the faces of the people at the bar, mostly people on their lunch breaks.  Just after the waiter took our drink order the bar emptied except for a single guy.  He probably was close to my age, fairly good looking, and he seemed to know whoever the bartender was.  Our waiter came back with our drinks and took our meal order, but as soon as the waiter left I looked up and noticed the guy from the bar looking at me.  Now, usually when you catch someone staring at you they quickly look away, embarrassed at being caught, but he didn’t, he smiled.

I am absolutely positive that I blushed and looked away.  Here I was, a 30+ woman, ten days out from major knee surgery, having lunch with her mother and the guy at the bar was smiling at me.  I was pretty sure I didn’t have anything on my face since we hadn’t even gotten our food yet and there was only an elderly couple sitting behind us, so he must have been smiling at me, right?

A hundred questions began to run through my head.  Questions like, was I the one who was staring, not intending too, or did he think he knew me, because I certainly didn’t recognize him.  Then there was, do I dare look back to see if he’s still looking at me and why would I even care if he was, it’s not like I was interested in getting his number or anything.  (BTW: I’m married and very much in love with my husband.)  But curiosity got the best of me so I sneaked a look, and yep, he smiled at me…again!

Do you want to know what happened next?  Well I hate to disappoint you, but it wasn’t anything exciting.  The waiter came with our meal and other than being completely self conscious about getting food on my face, I had a nice chat with my mom and ate way too much.  We paid our bill and as I was leaving the restaurant I sneaked one last glance. The guy was deep in conversation with the bartender and I don’t know if he even noticed me leave.

Today’s ‘post’ point has nothing to do with writing except that it helped me to remember what it felt like to blush and a writer can get inspiration from the simplest places, even lunch out with her mom.  So thank you to the guy at the bar for making a 30+ woman on crutches blush, I’d forgotten what that felt like.

1 comment:

  1. That is great stuff I would totally use a similar situation in my writing. Sometimes it's nice to get noticed :)

    ReplyDelete