Are you for sale?

Yesterday, as I was surfing the net (work avoidance thing) I went to the MSN homepage a number of times. Something that caught my eye was a picture of a man. Underneath the picture, in bold letters were the words Mr. Right. And below that, the tag line that read "World's Most Eligible Billionaires".

Now, I never actually opened the article to find out what it said because I was too annoyed at the message I was getting from the visuals.

Let's back up a few years. I'm a lot younger and only recently separated from my now ex-husband. I went out with a friend of mine to a Pub she frequented a lot. Enough to know the regulars. Non-alcoholic drinks were free (which was good because I was poor), and we could play pool and darts (both also free) to our hearts content.

Well, this man came up and put his arm around me. I'd never met him so I was immediately put off by that. He was drunk and openly undressing me with his eyes. It gave me the creeps. Anyway, he asked me how old I was so I told him sixteen. He didn't care, he tried groping me anyway. I told him I was jailbait, he needed to back off and it didn't even slow him down. We moved over to the bar and he followed us, forcing his way between me and my friend. I said rude, mean things to get him to back off but he didn't.

Now I should point out that my friend and I met in a sign language class so we both knew sign (her better than me because she was the deaf instructor's interpretor - but that's beside the point). She was behind this man, signing over his shoulder to me, telling me to be nice, he was a millionaire! Like that somehow excused his behavior and made it okay for him to be a total ass.

Eventually the owner of the Pub asked the man to leave. He did and we waited a while before we left - only to find that this man had waited for us outside. He became more aggressive towards me, trying to break out the car windows once we made it to the car. The owner of the Pub came and held him back so we could leave, all the while my friend was telling me I was stupid for not going for it with this guy - and it was HER car windows he was trying to bust out.

So fast forward to yesterday when I'm seeing that image. Why would anyone be attracted to a person simply because of the size of their bank account? Yes, money is nice - it's even necessary in life. But just because you have it doesn't mean you're a decent person, worthy of my attention.

It may be that you can fall in love with a rich man as easily as a poor man but honey, if that's all you have to attract me, you're dead in the water with me.