Friday 18 July 2008

Soft-sell

No not Soft Cell of ‘Tainted Love’ fame, instead I’m talking about a slightly surreal experience I had earlier today. To temporarily stave off the hypnotic powers of the golf coverage (The Open is on at the moment for those not up to speed) I took a drive into town – not with anything specific in mind, but I do like to people-watch and window-shop! There’s just something intriguing, and sometimes amusing, about seeing different individuals wrapped up in their own little worlds. Anyway, after meandering through the shopping centre for a while, I was snapped out of my own daydreaming:


“Hey, hello… Yeah, you!”


It took me a couple of seconds to register that the words were coming from a girl (about 20) a few metres from some sort of stall/temporary shop. She was quite pretty in a distinctive kind of way, and I approached her.


Me: “Hi.”

Her: “Wow, you have really nice skin – what do you use?”

Me: [slightly surprised] “Er, just a bit of standard moisturiser.”

Her: [now reaching for and holding my hands] “You have a beautiful face.”

Me: [thoroughly embarrassed] “I bet you tell all the boys that.”

Her: [leading me to the stall] “No, you know you look good. Come here and have a look at these…”

Me: [still a bit flustered] “Um… No sorry, I really have to go. I don’t have the time.”

Her: “Don’t worry, come back later.”


And with that I smiled and left. The exchange couldn’t have taken more than a minute or two, but it left me feeling flattered, happy, confused and a bit annoyed. Now I’d like to think that she wasn’t lying as she reeled me in, complimenting my complexion, because it’s great having a cute girl say that. However, I’m not stupid and I bet she had repeated the same spiel to a dozen guys before and a dozen guys after. So in the end maybe I’d have preferred the hard-sell approach, where I’m quite adept at telling overzealous salesmen to politely fuck off!


P.S. I went on to buy a rather nice red T-shirt :)

1 comment:

Calavera said...

Oh dear, that happened to me once, after I had sat a three hour exam, and I was trying to rush home to cram for the next one. I was power-walking through at a lightening pace, wandering if I could make the next train on time, when someone did the exact same with me, this time commenting about my hair, telling me how shiny and pretty it was and how it looked so well-cared for.

At the time I was really flattered, but then again, if you know anything about me at all, I don't even condition my hair, I straighten it almost every day, and parts of it are actually really damaged!

Still, it's a good 'reeling in' technique, I guess.

And red tee-shirts are always nice, I think I own two red teeshirts myself.

:)

Thanks for the comment at my blog, by the way!