World Cup at Favorite Bar

Should it worry me that I was in a bar at 10:00 this morning?

Well, under normal circumstances, I hope you would not hesitate to answer that question with a very loud "YES!!!!". But today was the World Cup final, and Favorite Bar, which happens to be owned by an Italian-American, opened early to host viewing of the match. Helen arrived at 9:45 and was able to secure us barstools. Luckily. By the time I got there a scant fifteen minutes later, all the stools were spoken for. And a very sizeable group had gathered by the time the game started, with people spilling out the door.

We were not disappointed. Italy won in penalty kicks, much to the joy of most of the crowd. One or two people were rooting for France, but they took the defeat well and still seemed to have fun. And here's the very best part: most of the dysfunctional drunks who regularly pollute Favorite Bar were not in attendance. One or two of them came by, but they were the more innocuous of the dysfunctional regulars. I truly love Favorite Bar, but several of the people (okay, men) who frequent it work my last nerves. Frankly, they probably don't like me either. And I'm okay with that.

During the game, Helen and I had much fun selecting our favorites of the Italian soccer players. My new sports boyfriends are all so cute, honestly, we'd take any of them. Worry not, we did pay attention to the play of the game as well. But when an entire team of beautiful Italian men is running around on a tv screen mere feet away... well, a girl is going to notice. The whole experience has led us to decide we should take a flirting tour of Italy. Helen could tell people she's half Chinese and half Italian (she's actually half Chinese and half Mexican), and I could tell them I'm half Italian and half whatever else they want: African-American, Portuguese, Brazilian, whatever. People always assume about 1000 different things, anyway.

Of course, given what I've heard about Italian men, we probably wouldn't need to say anything, let alone lie about our ethnicity, to get attention.