Fish for the eye-contact

—1) Yrs Trly is ambling the parking-lot adjacent to the Honeoye Falls-Lima-Mendon youth-baseball fields.
I’m walking toward where I get on Lehigh Valley RailTrail; what once was Lehigh Valley Railroad’s Buffalo Extension.
The railroad is gone, but its grade remains as a rail-trail.
It goes through woods where I hike it. Plus my dog’s ashes are along that rail-trail, which we hiked many times.
As a railroad it was very well engineered, but it never made much sense. It’s out in the sticks — not much lineside freight traffic.
It was just another option across New York State from Buffalo to New York City.
A fairly attractive young girl approaches from the other direction. I look for the eye-contact I previously avoided.
Our eyes met, and she smiled at me.
As she passed I turned and said “you smile at me, and I gotta say hello.”
BINGO! What did I just do readers? (“Change the channel Luke!”)
I told her, by inference of course, I liked what I saw.
She loved it! She smiled harder and blushed. She didn’t smack me.
Call that a FLIRT if you want. It wasn’t “how ‘bout it honey?”
—2) I exit my supermarket in Canandaigua.
A pretty young girl is lunging toward me. We’ll crash if we don’t go around each other.
Our eyes meet, and she smiles at me.
“You gotta stop that smiling,” I tell her. “That smiling is dangerous.”
She smiled so hard she lit up the store.
Another FLIRT readers: I liked what I saw.
And I didn’t get smacked.
—3) I’m at a wedding celebration in Massachusetts.
The 21-year-old eye-candy of my niece’s 40-year-old ex comes to my table, and sits right next to me.
When an opening occurs she starts talking to me.
She notices I’m more attracted to her eyes and smile than her obvious lack of a bra.
With the smile she had, she didn’t need to be a loose woman.
(Her smile was ravishing.)
We talked and talked and talked some more; the usual pointless yammering — me basking in her smile, and she liking that I liked her as a person.
Finally ex got her away from me; I’m old enough to be her grandfather.
I wonder if she enjoys being perceived as eye-candy.
—4) I start in on Lehigh Valley RailTrail, and here comes a pretty young jogger.
“Now say something to her!” the little voice in my head exclaims.
The zealots would tell me that’s Satan.
I spoke to her; and she was thrilled. A guy struck up a conversation with her, and he wasn’t trying to snag her as a trophy.
“I am so glad I said something to you,” I told her. “I almost didn’t.”
“I’m glad ya did too,” she said.
“Striking up a conversation always works,” I exclaimed.
“I hope we meet again,” she said.
4-5 times since, and every time we met again, she smiled at me.
So what’s my conclusion here readers?
My critics tell me my lady-friends are “just being sociable!”.
The same sorry litany I’ve heard since age-5: “No attractive female will have anything to do with you, Bobby!”
If I were to let those naysayers degrade my approach to women I wouldn’t have any fun.
A woman’s pleasure in meeting me will be a reflection of my joy in meeting her.
I see it all the time.
If I’m the least bit tentative or apprehensive, she picks that up.
I hafta assume females enjoy meeting me.
If I were to believe what my critics tell me, that women didn’t enjoy meeting me — that would reflect.
So go ahead; fish for the eye-contact, or say something.
It usually gets a positive response.

• RE: “Lady-friends……” —WOOPS! “Friends who happens to be female.”