Well, here's a weird story.

My brother, home for the holidays from Portland, and I went to our local Goodwill donation site to drop stuff off for our family. We've done this frequently over the years, though him obviously less so since, you know, Portland. He's two years older than me. We're both in our twenties.

There were two guys there at the site to help us unload. They were large, and about as appealing as you'd expect of them, them being humans employed by Goodwill to perform menial labor, not really talk to people, and certainly not to count out change accurately or show you where housewares are with a smile. It went basically fine until the end.

OK, it went basically fine if I ignore how every time I tried to pick up anything and take it to the shed they took it out of my hands before I got three steps out, while mostly letting my brother lift and walk any things he pleased. Don't you know that women can't carry things? Including pillows. But hey, not having to carry things is not something one usually gripes over.

But then as we walked back to my car, the larger, more sadly-straggly-bearded lump asked me: "'Zzat your dad, helping?"

I was puzzled. Quite, in fact. I scoped the whole parking lot for some man anywhere who might be mistaken for my dad. My first thought was that there must be some brown-haired, older man in a car just down the lot or something who I hadn't seen, who looked vaguely like me.

"What?" I asked.

"Is he your dad?" the troll said. This time he gestured towards my brother. "You know, your dad, or, or, or something?"

"Uuhhh, that's my brother," I said to him. He had a gap in his front teeth and his eyes were cinched in the middle by his cheekfat. And, at 300 pounds, employed at Goodwill, and (I did the mental math) quite probably living in his parents' basement, trying to hit on me.

__________

My bro and I talked about it as we drove off. We agreed it was weird, gross, yuck, just inappropriate. The funny thing was that I had kind of shrugged it off by the time we got around the block. Because gross men hit on woman all the time. Because I've been asked that before, repeatedly. Because "it just happens."

My brother went home, got drunk, peeved, and then he emailed the head of HR for our area Goodwill. That head's a she, by the way, which encouraged him as well. At least when you tell a woman about a guy hitting on you she doesn't try to say you're being too sensitive, or that you're arrogant.

She got back to him at 6 am the next day. And now he's talking to someone in their Risk Management this week. He's keeping me posted and I'm at least curious. Could be a lawsuit, I guess. I bet all it'd take to get a lawyer interested in a story like this would be Goodwill, ignoring that email. (Not that I'd go to one. I told you. I'd written it off.)

_________________

It's weird. I'm interested to see how it progresses and also agree that that employee shouldn't be hitting on chicks half his age while he's on the clock at his job.

But I can't help but notice, and think it's funny, that this is happening because my brother saw and got pissed off and escalated the situation - so in a way, I'm weirdly voiceless, and a guy's standing up for me because another guy was disgusting, and while this is about women and gender and stuff like that, our MCs so far are 3/4 men. And certainly, I guess, is the hero.

_____________

Hey, don't they say that if you're white and see a black person get discriminated against it's your job to speak up because you have the power, because you're the majority, because you have the privilege? That could be the angle here. That probably is.

But still. It's weird.

At least he's not getting me kicked out of bars for calling the bartender pregnant anymore, I guess.