I've been lurking here for a little while now, starting to familiarize myself with some of the terminology and techniques. Today was my first day that I thought I had a concrete example for my field report.

Status: Unsuccessful, but good learning experience.

Here's what happened.

(Background info)This past week has just been one of those weeks where I felt like growing out my beard. I'm 20 years old with a babyface unshaven, but when I grow out the beard I look much older. I have a really nice goatee and chin strap that comes in naturally.

Anyways, I work at a pharmacy that I commute a decent distant to everyday. Its a summer job and it pays really well, so I don't mind. In strolls in this girl in scrubs, who I've seen before, with 2 other girls in scrubs that I have not. One of the other girls is a HB8/9 Italian, and I notice that she keeps checking me out as I'm ringing up her friend. I look at her, give her a nice smile and they all leave. Not a minute later the girl I was ringing up comes back in, hands me a slip of paper, and tells me that the italian girl wants me to call her. I tried to keep my cool, but I'm pretty sure I was beat red...I was really thrown off guard.

On my commute home, which is about an hour, I psyched myself up to call her. I told myself that I was the prize, and that I had nothing to lose by calling her. I went it with the strategy of just sounding confident and hopefully making her laugh, and if the conversation went well I'd ask her out to get coffee or something. She didn't pick up and ended up calling me back after I got home. The conversation went a little bit like this.

[Italian HB] Hey sorry I missed your call

[me] blah blah blah

...

[me] so you're wearing scrubs, are you a nurse or something?

[Italian HB] no I'm a dental assistant, I clean peoples teeth everyday, lol

[me] oh so you must be one of those toothbrush nazis, how many times a day do you brush? 8?

[HB] no only 6 lol

[me] so can you clean my teeth, do I get a discount or something?

[HB] yea if you have insurance, how old are you?

[me] I'm in college, I'm 20

(this is where I blew it)

[HB] OH no! I'm too old for you, I couldn't even date you! I thought you were at least 30!

[me] well how old are you?

[HB] 26

[me] well you're the youngest girl in the pharmacy to give me their number, so you're not cougar status yet

[HB] oh thats too bad, I wish I could be a cougar but you're just too young for me

I ended the conversation shortly after some late negs, but I think I really blew it when the age conversation came into play. I guess what I should have done was framed the conversation better so that she wouldn't have asked me my age (I knew she was older before I called) and I should have had some type of DHV in my conversation, which I don't believe I did.

Even though this was unsuccessful, I think this situation gave me a lot more confidence and I will try to learn from some of these mistakes.