By Eleanor Kazdan, March 5, 2020 — I feel very lucky to this day that I did not like to be a server in a restaurant. When I was 21 I got a job in Toronto at Ontario Place, which is a big tourist attraction in Toronto. And it was a seafood restaurant called Stoodley’s. I had never been a server before, but I went out and bought the uniform – white bell-bottom pants and a blue and red top. I tried to be a good waitress and I just did not like it. I didn’t like having to be nice to people all the time and hoping to get good tips. I did not get good tips. Other young women did. So after a couple of weeks, I decided no, I did not like to be a waitress, and I went back to my old summer job working for the government of Ontario as a typist.
And so after I’d been at that job for about two weeks a friend of mine, Elaine, also had a summer job right near where I was working in the center of Toronto. And she said, “Let’s meet for lunch!” So I said, “Great.” She was a summer student, a psychology student. She said, “Well my fellow psychology students and I meet at Women’s College Hospital, we go to the hospital cafeteria and we have lunch there. So I met her twice actually, and the first time was not memorable. There were a bunch of people there. I didn’t know them at all. But the second time, I was sitting beside a very cute guy. And after a while, he started asking me questions, and he was very interested in the fact that I was a musician, I played the piano, and I sang…he asked me a lot of questions. [He] didn’t tell me much about himself. And I remember him leaving the group and I turned to Elaine and I said, “He’s really cute!”
So I went back to my job typing and towards the end of the day my friend Elaine called me on the phone she says “Guess what? That guy asked for your phone number!” So, oookay. I was excited. I left work and that night I was going to a concert. My piano teacher had given me tickets to a free summer concert. And so I was going by myself; walking down the street, kind of hanging out between work and the concert, and I happened to bump into the cute guy. And I was feeling a little embarrassed knowing that he’d asked for my phone number. So we talked for a little while, and he said “What are you doing tonight?” And I said, “Well, I’m going to a concert.” So he said, “Can I come?” And I said “Okay!” So, that was our first date! We met in front of the concert hall – I was very impressed that he showed up early, he wasn’t one of these people that was trying to make an impression by coming fashionably late. When I got there he was already sitting, waiting for me on a wall. And that was our first date – July 25, 1971. And we’ve been together ever since! I was very lucky.
