A cool, yet eerie thing happened today when I was running around outside Perfumemania conducting a scent test with all the female shoppers. I was running around with 2 fragrance sample papers, each with a different cologn on them and using opinion opener.

Today's laundry day, so I was wearing some pretty lame clothes except for a wildly patterned zip-up hoody from Buckle, and I had only spritzed on a small (4 shots) dose of Lucky You about 9 hours earlier. Most folks were friendly anyway, and I only got shot down one time out of probably 30 approaches. What happened next caught me completely off guard: a HB9.5 stoped calmly in the middle of the mall when I approached, and I got no bitch shield WHATSOEVER. Whenever I talked, she smiled and nodded, and whenever I finished a statement, she didn't move to walk away, she just waited quietely for the next thing I would say. No other girls I surveyed did this, so I was having trouble gaming her because she was so receptive. Somehow she was silently hypnotizing me. I didn't snap out of it until she asked my age, which, of course I have a fun response prepared for that question. It went something like this:

HB: "How old are you?"
KM: "Take a guess."
HB: "Um.. 25."
KM: "Na, that's not it. But we can get to the bottom of this. Have you got a coin?"
HB: * Thinks for a second, then decides she wants to see what will happen* "Yeah, I do." * puts bags down in the middle of the crowd, opens her purse * "I have lots of coins."
KM: "Well, we only need one." * takes coin from her while making sure to kino slightly against her hand, she does the same * "Okay, so your guess is 25."
HB: "Yup."
KM: * grin! flip coin into the air, everyone in mall watching us *
COIN: HEADS!!!
KM: "Okay, I'm older than that."
HB: LOL "Okay, uh 27?"
KM: * Tosses coin again *
COIN: TAILS!!!
KM: "I'm younger.. okay, you got me. I'm 26!"
HB: LOL
* Kino again when I give the coin back to her *

Turns out she liked the Lucky You I was wearing better than the 2 cologns I was asking her to sample

Ok I thought this through last night, and have a theory about why this 9.5 who had no business stopping was giving me the time of day. Here's the important detail I left out. When I approached HB9.5, I was walking away from a table where a nice looking woman who was old enough to be my mom was seated. I had just given her the cologn scent test, and HB9.5 assumed that I was with her. She was seated in the distance, so HB9.5 didn't get a good look, but she definetely noticed I was talking with her. A few minutes into the survey, the conversation took a turn like this:

HB: "Hey was that your girlfriend? Where'd she go?" *pointing to table across the room*

* we both look over at the table where the woman was seated, and she's gone *

KM: "Oh, she wasn't my girlfriend. I was giving her the survey..."

Preselection must have disarmed the bitch shield completely. I didn't get the feeling that HB9.5 was trying to ditch me with this observation, she seemed genuinely interested if the other woman was my girlfriend. She sort of confirmed this to me when she asked my age a little later. IOI, bigtime. We talked for another 5 minutes after this segment took place.

preselection is killer

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Capture the imagination first and the heart next. - Style