I am about to return to my car after a few hours of walking along the beach.
But first, I am going to approach this girl sitting on a concrete wall, smoking a cigarette, looking out over the water.
From a distance I can tell she has red hair. That attracts me.
Aaaaand I decide that I am going to speak to her with an English accent, since I've been talking to myself in an English accent this afternoon.
Why not.
"Hello," I say in my "English" accent.
"Hello!" she says.
My farce doesn't last long.
"I don't have an accent," I confess. "I just wanted to do that."
She tells me that she does that, too! We exchange some words, can't recall what about.
I pitch her the experiment.
"Why?"
"I'll tell you after you say 'yes' or 'no.'"
She consents to participate.
I begin explaining the parameters, and I have to work a bit to extract the timer from my pocket. It's kind of stuck in there. I comment on that. Usually I can take it out easily. It's not in the pocket in which I normally keep it.
Timer extracted. She consents. I sit on the wall, start the timer, and we begin.
Immediately she asks if she can blink. I nod in the affirmative and do not respond verbally.
"Oop!" she exclaims, eyes widened, realizing that she spoke during the 60 seconds.
Our eye contact is relaxed and pleasant. She has nice eyes and a pretty face. I notice her cigarette is still lit in her left hand.
(I am writing this on Monday night, and our interaction happened Sunday night. So, unfortunately, I can't recall much else about our time. This is why I always try to write immediately after interacting with someone.)
The timer expires. If I recall correctly, she said that was hard.
"I don't even know if I do that with my boyfriend," she says.
We talk about why I'm doing this experiment, Pirates of the Caribbean, English accents, how she just moved to Victoria from Nelson and is looking for apartments right now, how her boyfriend is moving with her, but hasn't gotten here yet, about her Canadian cigarettes, and... Other stuff I can't remember. She was fun to chat with.
I don't recall what prompted her to say this, but with regards to participating in the experiment, she said that she's on an adventure and decided to say "yes" to a new thing.
I do my usual first name + photo blog request, and she consents. Yay! I take her picture and give her a leave-behind.
We chat more, and then her phone rings. Looks like an apartment callback.
"I'm going to disappear," I tell her. "Good luck on your apartment search." (Or something equivalent.) We hug.
And, right before I walk away and she picks up her phone, I tell her:
"Welcome home."
