Why Can't We Be Friends?

I have an awkward conundrum.

So I'm currently living in a suburban area with zero friends nearby, and a job that doesn't force me to interact with people in my age group on a regular basis. Being young and friendly, I'm finding the adjustment from university town life where everyone was close in age, proximity, and willingess to par-tay to this strange social wasteland where my middle aged neighbors rarely leave their houses.

I've never been in the situation where I've had to try and make friends without the aid of a pre-existing institution, be it a school, a summer camp, or even the randomly chosen roommates from my exchange program, and I'm finding it surprisingly difficult. I can't decide if this difficulty is society's fault or mine. With so many news reports and accounts (fictional and non) of rapists and murderers and kidnappers and smugglers and pirates and evil overlords permeating the media pop culture, is it any wonder that something as simple as making eye contact in public can be considered creepy? Why did that guy just smile at me in the produce aisle? Is he making fun of me? Is he going to sue me? Is he going to kidnap me and sell me into some sort of sick underground drug/slavery/concubine ring? I should probably pretend I need something from the dairy counter and RUN NOW.

I find myself frequently caught between this kind of irrational paranoia and, on the flip side, trying to overcompensate by forcing myself to be overfriendly, which probably causes other people to think that I'm going to murder them and turn them into home furnishings. So far my twin approaches of total mistrust and giant friendly smiles have yet to win me the friendship of random strangers, and I'm trying to figure out a new approach.

One idea, which I'm gathering the courage to try, is to randomly give my phone number to the nerdy guys who work at the local video game store. The last time I was there picking up Super Paper Mario (because I am crap at video games that aren't Paper Mario related) I struck up some good banter with the guys behind the counter. Joking about speaking German and how impressive their disc de-scratch-ifying machine was (super impressive!), I was struck by the urge to give them my number and ask if they'd ever like to grab a beer or engage in some good old fashioned nerdiness (D&D? Seeing Scott Pilgrim? I'm not picky!) but chickened out when I figured that they would consider my forwardness creepy, or misconstrue it thinking I was trying to get into their khaki cargo pants.

It reminds me a little of romantic comedies; gestures that seem really cute and thoughtful on paper but that suddenly seem more like grounds for a restraining order in real life. Not that I'm planning on sitting out side of the gaming store with a boom box, John Cusack style, but it does seem like there's more room for error than I'm normally comfortable with in my social interactions. Still, nothing lost and nothing gained. So when I finish Super Paper Mario within the next few weeks and have an excuse to see if they sell the old-timey Game Cube controllers, I think I might just be giving out my digits and hoping for the best.

(Poor Peach clearly did not get away from the guy in the produce section quickly enough.)