Pick up fine

We travel back in time a decade or so and...

There i am, a confused teenager wondering how the whole guy girl thing works. Slowly, pop culture exposes me to the phenomenon of pick up lines and i confront the holy grail of sexual pursuit; this is what i had been waiting for, this was the secret!

I put my newfound knowledge into practice. I started off with the lame 'have i seen you somewhere before?' line at an Interact event. A series of bemused girls say mixtures of things like 'er. i dont know hmm let me think about it', 'er, have you? where?' until, jackpot! one goes 'oh yeah at drama comp right?!' (i had never been to a drama comp in my life) i say 'yeaaah, i think you could be right!'.

So this one is really pretty and im all excited and manage to carry through a conversation and get her number and promise to call her sometime. Only i was so excited to have pulled it off i had to ask her three or four times afterwards for confirmation. Just to make sure it had really taken place outside the confines of my mind.

This other time, im at a rock concert and im walking up the stairs at MKOP. There are these two girls and one of 'em, as far as i could discern, was checking me (or possibly my friend, assuming she was slightly squint eyed) out while we were going up the stairs, so i go upto them and ask the one who was looking;

'Have you been feeling kinda tired lately?'

What can only be retrospectivey described as confusion, but disguised to my eyes in the heat of that moment as charmingly aroused curiousity, passes across her face.

'Uh tired? No?'

A pause, she was obviously not wondering which lunatic asylum i escaped from; Angoda or Mulleriyawa, and then she drops the question i've been waiting for...

'Why?'

So let her have the punchline.

And lean against the bannister and look into her eyes, not a lot unlike Elvis, expecting to see that brief moment when she would melt as her walls of restraint collapse beneath a river of uncontrollable adoration.

Instead I see horror. And indignation. And she blurts out;

'Excuse me but my mom is here!'

That was probably the only thing she could think of, but she was refferring to the 'chick' standing next to her, and the scary part is that I think that really was her mom, who was leaning on the banister like some rocker chick and giving me a look as if to say; where did you get the balls??

So i followed the first instinct of wisdom, I flirted with the mom. No, not really, I walked away before any fathers or brothers could materialize. See the thing with instinct is you gotta make sure its not too influenced by the latest installment of American Pie, or you'll find yourself getting into a sticky situation, rather like that unfortunate pie in the movie.