Is your name Maya?

"Excuse me, ma'am. Is your name Maya?"

Maya is sitting at a table with her mother under the shade. She's very pretty, and is drinking a Lone Star tall boy at 3 in the afternoon, wearing cowboy boots. A true Texas beauty, with an Austin flavor -- nose ring, bangles on her wrists, and may or may not be wearing deodorant, judging by the kind of dress she's wearing.

"No," she says politely, with a smile. Texans are typically more polite than people from other states.

"You look like Maya (insert some last name here that I couldn't hear)," he says.

This, of course, is a trigger for her to tell him her actual name, which is inaudible from where I'm sitting.

"Hello (insert her name here), I'm Christopher Robin." It is the dead of summer, and Christopher Robin is wearing a hockey jersey, draped over a black polo, as well as jeans and sneakers. I'm sure he is sweating his ass off.

"Christopher Robin?" the pretty girl asks, intrigued. I vaguely recognize the name from some sort of movie or TV show, something like that. "Really?"

"Yes ma'am," he says.

Maya's mother is smiling, possibly because she approves of Christopher Robin's manners. I'm smiling, too, because I know what Christopher Robin is doing.

I find it brilliant in theory, if not awkward in delivery.

He's using the "Are you Maya?" line as an in.

It's a fail safe method to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. No one is going to be threatened by it, and no one will automatically assume you're hitting on them. What you do once you've got the initial hook is up to your abilities, of course. Christopher Robin doesn't appear to have much in that department. But he knows one thing: every pretty girl who is sitting next to him at a coffee shop in Austin looks like Maya.

For the next five minutes, as Maya drinks her beer, and her mother sips a glass of water, Christopher Robin sits in silence, sweating, as I pretend not to be observing from five feet away. There is a lull. Christopher Robin has lost the momentum.

A fresh opportunity presents itself when Maya and her mom wonder out loud who the man portrayed in the mural on the coffee shop's wall is:

"That's the artist who did the painting," Christopher Robin explains, despite not having been asked. "His name is (inaudible)."

"Oh, thanks."

There is no smile this time.

"You're welcome," he says.

The wheels have come off the train.

From now on, though, I'm putting that one in the database for safe keeping, the next time I want to use that card. Are you Maya? No. Oh, you look like my friend Maya. What's you're name?

She tells you. You introduce yourself. And you've broken the ice. It's all up to you from that point forward.

When Maya and her mom get up to leave, they do not say goodbye to Christopher Robin. And he is still sitting there, sweating, possibly wondering why he is wearing both a black polo and a hockey jersey on a blazing hot August afternoon in Austin, Texas.