A middle-aged woman walks into a bar...

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, right?

No joke, just observation.

Tuesday I was in Dallas and going to my favorite mall, NorthPark. I decided that Nordstrom's crab cake lunch sounded too tempting to pass up. Or, perhaps the cilantro lime salad with shrimp. I would win, either way. It was 12:30 when I arrived and no tables available, but I could sit at the bar.

I decided to join the other single, and for the most part, middle-aged women at the bar.

I don't do this very often, so I'm obviously ignorant of the rules. It seems that you can plop all your worldly goods onto the next bar seat. This keeps anyone from sitting beside you. Unless there isn't an option and then the newcomer can ask for the goods to be moved. I didn't have to do this because the young-enough-to-be-my-daughter woman was picking up her goods and leaving. The bartender was being most solicitous and she had two of those little chocolate minty stick dessert things, so I thought things were looking up.

I obviously forgot the 'middle-aged' part of my description. I cannot complain about the service--he was very busy because it seems every by-herself middle-aged shopper was at the bar--but solicitous isn't the descriptor I'd use. Ahem.

I settled on the salad, envied the glass of white wine the lady down the bar was having, and tried to listen at any/all conversations going on around me. (Eavesdropping is de rigueur for a writer.) However, everyone (except me) had their worldly goods on the next seat and there weren't any conversations.

Thirty minutes after I hoisted myself onto the bar seat, I was walking out the door. Check paid, tip given, and only one chocolate mint stick to my name.