No. Just No.

9:15pm. Thursday night. Drunk man approaches three girls minding their own business in a bar. He proceeds to barely make sentences and spill his beer in a plate of chicken fingers. He is not the first man to do this. Nor, will he be the last.

It's interactions like these that make you question why you left your house in the first place. I mean, it's entertaining sometimes, but mostly it's just sad. I've found that as I've gained years, I've depleted in patience for other people. Firstly, this man was too old to not be able to hold his liquor at 9pm on a weeknight. Secondly, did he really believe any of us were going to succumb to his irresistible opening line of 'what's going on, ladies?". Any self-respecting woman knows that it is not worth talking to a man who slithers up to your table uninvited and ends a sentence with a sleazy tone and an address of 'ladies'.

Within the first two minutes of quietly paying him attention I realized that he was the type of person who would not go away easily. After I reached my threshold for common idiocy and strangers existing in my personal space, I began shaking my head and stating 'no, no, no no. NO.' as if I was scolding a naughty puppy or a toddler. He looked at me glassy-eyed as I asked him what he wanted. He stated that he wanted to be friends. I told him that that was very nice, but we did not want to be friends with him. After about 10 seconds of looking into his crazy eyes and him stating that I needed to get off whatever pedestal I was on, he finally turned his attention to two girls at the bar.

He had finally found the girls with low self-esteem/self-worth that he was looking for all night and who were not bothered by a stranger trying to put his hands down her pants within the first 5 minutes of meeting her. Those girls are the reason this guy exists. I thought it was funny that he mistook my complete disinterest and distain of his behavior to mean that I thought I was better than him and sitting on some imaginary pedestal like a princess. Now, if having standards as to how strange men should interact with women they are hitting on, or not liking beer being spilled on me by said stranger means that I sit on some pedestal, then by all means make it look like the Iron Throne. He shook it off and tried again instead of sitting in the corner embarrassed and reflecting on his behavior. And, instead of all girls in that bar banning together and says "no. no no. no.' to this man, those two wombats interfered with his house training and told him he was a good boy and gave him a lollipop after he shit all over the new carpet.

It's hard out there to begin with. Condoning bad habits only makes it harder. And, I sit here and try to figure out the chicken or the egg situation at hand: Did the bad-behaved men come first or did the girls with low standards begin this cycle?