Approach Technique: Limit Your Vocabulary

The other evening I spent a nice relaxing night out by myself, acquiring some new music and doing a little pleasure reading. Whenever I go out, I always take the opportunity to meet some new people and work on my approach technique. For the most part, I was just doing my own thing, but I managed to work in three approaches quite effortlessly.

The first two were fun, simple, short and playful. I always imagine ridiculous scenarios in my head, and I'm quite unafraid to verbalize them. In the first instance, there was a cute, young cashier who looked either a bit bored or tired. When I was at the front of the line, I looked her in the eyes and asked: "A bit bored, are you?" The moment I addressed her directly, she brightened up a bit and looked substantially more energetic. She replied, adamantantly: "No, never!" Me: "Never bored, eh? How do you manage that? Do you entertain yourself by throwing things at unruly customers?" Cashier: "Of course not! That's against company policy." Me: "Let me guess. Next you're going to tell me that you always follow company policy." With that she chuckled a bit, and unconsciously adjusted her hair.

Later, I was at a coffee shop in a fairly SWPL area. There were a couple of trashy-looking college girls, wearing excessive make-up and lipstick, who sat near me and were discussing various recent dalliances. Typically, I consider it a waste of time to even bother opening such girls, and at the time I was quite happily engrossed in reading The New Division of Labor. A bit later, they moved to one of the couches across the room that had just been vacated. Half an hour later, when I was about to leave, I was gathering up my things and I noticed that there was an iPhone on the seat next to me, where one of the two girls had been sitting. Given that I would have to approach them to return the girl's phone to her, I figured I might as well try to strike up a conversation.

A few sentences later, I used the word "ensconced," which was met with a quizzical look on both girls' faces. Apparently, neither of their vocabularies was broad enough to include such a word. While I could have cut my opener and gone on to a new topic, a sizable amount of momentum had been lost by the fact that I used a word they were thoroughly unfamiliar with. Obviously, I overestimated the articulacy and intelligence of the average SWPL college girl. Just because a certain demographic views themselves as educated and intelligent doesn't make it so. As a result, I have decided that a useful approach heuristic would be to limit my vocabulary unless a girl has demonstrated a reasonable grasp of the subtleties of the English language.