“I’m looking for a kumquat. Do you know what that looks like?”

Kay Kingsman flagged down a fellow shopper in the grocery store with that question — and no, he couldn’t identify a kumquat. But she kept on talking. “How’s your day?” she recalls asking. “Having a fun grocery trip?”

Kingsman, a 27-year-old manufacturing engineer in Portland, Ore., dragged the conversation on so long that this stranger in the citrus aisle interjected with an answer to a question she hadn’t pondered: “I’m married.”

That’s when Kingsman realized she didn’t know how to have a casual conversation with a stranger anymore. She hadn’t been flirting, at least not intentionally. She’d been earnestly seeking those little orange oblongs for a cake she was baking, and once she opened her mouth, she was so excited to be talking to someone that she couldn’t stop.