I walked up to an attractive woman leaning against a wall, said hi, and discovered that she was busy. Shortly afterward, she rushed into an ambulance with a coworker and left. As attempts to start a conversation go, mine had a fairly decisive departure.
I'm 27, and I've never asked a woman out. Approaching someone I find attractive is still unfamiliar territory. I don't have a collection of successful introductions to draw on, or even much experience of what happens between the introduction and asking for a date. I'm trying to get the conversation started.
The advice I'd been given was to approach women in person. A simple hi would be enough to begin. That sounded manageable: one word, no elaborate opening, very little to forget. I could do the part where I walked over and greeted someone. What came after that remained less clear.
So I tried. More than once. The women I approached all seemed occupied with something, which meant I kept getting to the opening without getting much further. I was gaining experience in beginning conversations that did not become conversations.
The woman by the wall was on her phone when I noticed her. I found her attractive, went over, and used the opening I'd been told was fine. She said she was busy. Then she and her coworker got into the ambulance and took off. There wasn't much room to wonder whether a different second sentence would have improved things. She had somewhere to be.
That detail rather complicated my assessment of the technique. I'd been trying to work out how to talk to women; she was leaving with a colleague in an ambulance. We were participating in quite different afternoons. I don't know anything more about her work or where they were going, only that my introduction arrived just before their departure.
Another attempt went similarly. I still couldn't say I'd successfully approached someone, and I was left wondering which part of the process I was getting wrong. Was hi too little to work with, or was I choosing moments when nobody had time for the rest? Workplaces, in particular, were beginning to seem like a questionable setting for my experiments in being more outgoing.
I had gone looking for a better way to introduce myself and now had questions about locations, timing, and whether there was a phrase that did more useful work than hi. I hadn't reached the stage of asking anyone out. So far, my most memorable attempt at meeting a woman had ended with her and a coworker driving away in an ambulance.
