“Chivalry is dead, but you’re still kinda cute” - Nelly Furtado

It’s hard to explain how I feel about holidays. But I’ll try. I don’t fully understand them. From my perspective, since I can remember, they are simply randomly assigned days that groups of people gather to celebrate, except each one has a theme, if you will. In my own experience there is The Immaculate Conception and Birth, the bunny that lays eggs, the day we fly our flag but still don’t stop at stop signs, and the day everyone pretends that turkey is delicious, etc.

Now don’t get me wrong, nothing makes me happier than to see other people happy, but I just can’t take some of these holidays seriously because the visions associated with them are absurd and confusing to me. Ultimately I have accepted that this is how I see holiday’s, and try my best to understand and show support to everyone else, who actually love holidays.

This is all to say that it was my pleasure to work the evening before a major US holiday. In fact, it was by far the most satisfying holiday-eve I've experienced. There is something special about a wine bar, I’m sure of it. I just haven’t put my finger on what it may be, yet. It has something to do with intimacy and curiosity.

The people who gather at a wine bar are agreeable to social intimacy and especially to trying something new. And on the evening before a major holiday, who showed up were couples. Each couple was genuinely present and attentive to one another. They each created their own field of intimacy in the bar. It was truly heartwarming to witness.

My hat is off to this couple though, who agreed to let me share tidbits and this photo. I didn’t notice the construction cone right away, and when I did, I knew it wasn’t there before. So I had to ask… ?

It was a very sweet story, I thought. The young lady is from Italy, and her parents still live there. Recently, her mother wanted an electric car, because she wanted to help. So her father happily drove her 10 hours one way so that she could drive her new electric car home. Meanwhile, he happily drove another 10 hours alongside her, until they reached their home together.

I appreciated this man’s chivalry and demonstration of love for his wife, and I vocalized it to them. Turns out, the young man loved this story about his girlfriend’s parents too, and told her he felt that way about her. He would do anything for her, even go outside to the train tracks and grab that “construction cone” for her. And she said, no you wouldn’t… and he did!

So that is why the construction cone ended up being a part of the evening at the wine bar. It was an expression of love that I call chivalry. And I hope that chivalry isn’t dead. No offense, Nelly.