Pick me up

The other night, my best friend and I decided to go to a sports bar in the mall we both grew up next to. Him and I are both staying with our parents (notice how I didn’t say living with?) and needed to get out, and away from them.

It was a chicken wings sport bar built in the last couple of years, nestled between a Sears and a Bay.

It felt odd and unsettling going for drinks at the same mall where I’d often go as a young teen with my friends, desperately trying to get picked up waaaaay before we were legal.

We used to literally chase boys across the mall. If we saw a group of them who were in the same age bracket as us, we were off sprinting like a Kenyan in a marathon.

However, once they were within range, we never actually talked to them. Usually, we hoped they’d notice us, but nothing ever really materialized. It was more the thrill of the chase, spotting them, honing them in. It was a lot like hunting except without the meaty reward. More like catch and release, minus the catching. Whatever. It killed time, which we seemed to have plenty of as teenagers.

My best friend, who’s gay, laughed about how terrible he was at the other end of it.

“If I tried to pick up girls at the mall, I told them I liked their shoes,” he said. “That should have been a dead giveaway.”

To his surprise though, the girls ate it up. It just goes to show, girls, before they’ve developed taste, boundaries, decency or standards, really get a thrill from male attention. Even if it’s from an effeminate (albeit incredibly handsome) boy.

While the mall didn’t produce much luck for me in terms of attracting the boys, Canada’s Wonderland was a whole different story. Any girl between the ages of 12 and 16 was fair game to the boys, who came from suburban municipalities in all directions and were generally flanked by their out-of-town cousins.

Since they were very young teenagers, their technique was far from savvy. A guy in baggy jeans and a baseball cap would walk up to you say one of the two things: “My friend over there likes you” or “My friend over there wants to know how old you are.”

If you were feeling sassy, you’d interrogate the messenger (“How old does he think I look?”), otherwise you’d lap it up. Numbers would be exchanged, phone calls would be made but ultimately nothing would happen ‘cause the boys lived in Woodbridge or Oshawa.

Nearly 20 years later, I sit in a sports bar at the mall that once provided me with such excitement, and look around. My best friend jokingly asks who at the bar I’d try to pick up if I had to. I look around. It’s mostly mustached hosers watching the game, Jersey Shore Lite, or large Indo-Canadian families eating chicken wings. I sighed. My 13-year-old self would have been thrilled by the challenge. But my 32-year-old self can’t get over the fact that I’m drinking in a bar in a mall that I grew up next to, flanked by two department stores.

It sure takes a lot to get a thrill these days.

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