Saw this cute girl sitting on a bench. We made eye contact and she was smiling already, so I opened with a simple wave and hello.

Made an observation about her shirt which was interesting (portrait of Princess Leia).

Introductions, shook hands, and I asked to sit down. We both established our time constraints (about an hour before our next class).

She was engaged in the conversation and I took it as a sign to stay longer than I usually would.

She was talking most of the time, almost 90%, which threw me off balance a little bit. There were times where I had trouble interjecting with my own responses, but then I thought to myself why did I have a strong desire to talk when I could just listen? She also spoke at quite a rapid pace and it made me a little more on edge instead of grounded and calm.

I didn’t express any intent yet, and at one point I wanted to compliment her eyes because I was worried the interaction was too platonic. But I teased her in response to one of her stories by saying she was crazy, and I liked that. Pretty obvious man-to-woman statement, and she responded with some shy laughing which I interpreted as positive.

I noticed her rings, and picked one as my favorite. She put her hand up to show me, and I should have taken advantage of the opportunity for kino, but I didn’t touch her hand.

She noticed an ant crawling on my leg and brushed it when her hand. I asked her if she liked insects, which she did. I playfully took my arm which now had the ant on it and touched it against hers while telling her I would give the ant to her.

She checked her phone to see the time and said she had to go to class early to set up for a rehearsal. I agreed that I needed to get going too. I wish I had been the one to end the interaction early. I should have set my time constraint to be earlier than her’s.

I told her we should hang out again, to which she said yes. Number closed.

I think we had chatted for almost half an hour, which felt insane to me.

I was definitely unprepared for the length and depth of the interaction, which was almost like an insta-date. I definitely was nervous and in impression mode because of it.

But this felt much better than my spam approaches. Quality over quantity. Even if she doesn’t respond to my text, I still had a lovely spontaneous interaction with a stranger, and got to practice my verbal game and conversation skills in general.

One thing I could have tried was leading her and truly doing an insta-date, for there was a small coffeeshop literally across the street. Next time.