Chatting Up Girls

There’s a Latin word for the young male who is adept at flirting with the opposite sex and that word is ‘arsehole’.  Of course, this comes from my own bitter teenage experience of chatting up girls being as successful as a Mogwai in a Miss Wet T-Shirt Competition.

If they didn’t go for the creepy open-mouthed staring then I’d have to try and start a conversation with words and everything. If you’ve ever tried to start your old banger of a car in the depths of winter you’re getting close to how impossible it was. If you imagine that car is also partly underwater whilst crack-crazed gibbons partied on the bonnet you’re getting closer.

Even worse was if a pretty young lady started talking to me I’d just freeze and turn bright red like a chameleon caught by his missus for not deleting his browser history.

So I’m not coming at this from any position of authority. But this was gold.

I was sat in a college canteen waiting for a meeting and there was a group of girls just minding their own business, talking about typical girly stuff: make up, hair, which one of One Direction they’d like to visit Second Base with. (Why the fascination with furniture shops?)

Then out of nowhere this lanky, overly confident lad strode up to them.  He was full of verve but this wasn’t genuine confidence. This was knock-off-fake-label-from-the-market-will-defo-shrink-in-the-wash confidence. I knew it, the girls knew it and he knew it.  But the jig continued.

He started to talk. Loud, brash, bold.

And even better - he’s putting on an American accent! At least I think he’s trying to be American. I don’t think he’d been classically trained, but if so I hope he kept the receipt. He sounded more like a Canadian in anaphylaxis shock.

“So, when’s your birthday?”

It could’ve been worse. He could’ve said star sign.

“Er, mine’s in May...”

“Oh yeah?  Mine’s in April.”

This guy is flying. He turns to the second girl.

“When’s your birthday?”

“June.”

“Mine’s in April.”

Wow. His birthday is in April! Always good to start with the most interesting thing about yourself I guess.

At this point the third girl is semi-turning away whilst trying to will her phone to boot itself up quicker than is technologically possible. Because she isn’t a Jedi, it doesn’t load up and he hits her with the question that by now we all know is coming.

“When’s your birthday?”

BOOM!

“November.”  

“So’s mine!” he says, to the surprise of everyone listening (me).

I wanted to shout YOU SAID APRIL A MINUTE AGO YOU MORON but that would’ve blown my cover so I whispered it into my sleeve instead, FBI style.

Instead of realising this guy was a fraud, Girl No 1 is vexed.

“How can you have two birthdays?”

Panic flooded his face, like he’d left the oven on in April and it was November.

“April’s my American birthday. I celebrate my UK one in April.”

“Ohhh, so you’re American?” said the Stepford girls, in unison. (Not the trade union, they just spoke at the same time.)

“You betcha sweet ass I’m American!”

Short of cramming the phrases sidewalk, Uncle Sam and relaxed gun laws into the sentence, this was all a little clichéd.

“We all thought you were from Newcastle.”

“Oh, I spent a bit of time in Geordieland last autumn. I mean, fall.”

Jesus. This reverse Dick Van Dyke routine was a riot and even the girls were starting to snigger. Catch Me If You Can this was not.

Then he asked for their phone numbers. Not one of them in particular, just a blanket question like he was conducting a survey. In a remarkable turn of events, two of them gave him their digits and he strutted off into the sunset.

I guess the world loves a dickhead.

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