How many geese could you take in a fight?

I knew within about 60 minutes that this date was going nowhere.

Not because anything went wrong, exactly. She was perfectly nice. The coffee was good. The setting was, frankly, exceptional (more on that in a sec).

But there was a moment - one specific, goose-related moment - where I got all the information I needed.

Let me set the scene.

We met at a coffee shop that happened to be next to a cute little city farm.

She was late. Not a big deal, but I do want it on the record that I, a woman with ADHD, was not late. I'd like to collect my gold sticker now, please. Thank you.

Naturally, we wandered into the farm to see the baby goats because what else are you going to do?

The goats delivered. There was a whole incident where a tiny baby goat got stuck in a bucket and a group of us had to orchestrate a rescue mission. Teamwork. Adrenaline. Emotional stakes. The works.

The goat immediately climbed back into the bucket. Little masochist.

Oh, how we all laughed.

So far, so good. Goats rescued. Coffees in hand. Still having a nice time.

Then we strolled over to the geese.

Now, these geese were enormous. Furious. Loud. Puffing their chests at each other like they'd been personally wronged. A full avian soap opera playing out in front of us.

And if there's one thing you should know about me,[FIRST NAME GOES HERE], it's that I'm never going to be one to pass up on a show.

So as we stood there watching the chaos unfold, I did what I always do when I'm trying to figure someone out.

I asked a hypothetical.

"How many geese do you think you could take in a fight?"

Now. This is a question that, with the right person, has real leverage.

Are the geese grounded or airborne?
Is it one at a time or all at once?
Do you get a weapon or is this bare-knuckle?

The possibilities are endless. The question practically begs you to play.

At the very least, you ask me to go first and share my approach.

My date scrunched her nose. She let out a sigh.

"Err… I dunno. One."

And that was it. Conversation over. Topic closed. No follow-up. No volley. No play.

She didn't engage. She didn't laugh. She didn't ask me the same question back so I could deliver my (clearly superior) goose-fighting strategy.

She just moved on.

And look, I know how this sounds. It's a question about fighting geese. It's not a meaningful compatibility metric by any reasonable standard.

Except... and I mean this, it absolutely is.

The question was never about the geese. It was about play.

It was me testing whether this person would go there with me. Whether they'd take something silly and run with it. Whether their brain would light up at a weird hypothetical the way mine does.

I do this all the time. Not just on dates but in friendships, in work, in life. I throw something unhinged into a conversation and see what comes back.

And the people who play? Those are my people.

They're the ones who'll entertain the ridiculous question. Who'll build on it, challenge it, take it somewhere I didn't expect. Who'll match the energy instead of flattening it.

They're also the ones I do my best work with. My best thinking with. My best living with.

The ones who scrunch their nose and shut it down... They're giving me data too.

They're not bad people at all. They're just not my frequency. And that's totally okay.

The problem is, most of us are trained to ignore that data.

We override it. We think: oh, it's just a silly question, don't read into it. Or: maybe I'm being too much. Maybe I should tone it down. Ask something more normal.

And before you know it, you're three months into a relationship - or a job, or a partnership, or a friendship - where you've slowly, quietly, dialled yourself down to fit.

You stopped asking the weird questions. You stopped being playful. You stopped trusting the signals that told you, right there at the goose enclosure, everything you needed to know.

I spent years doing this. Shrinking the parts of me that felt "too much" so I could fit into spaces that were never built for me.

And it took a long time to learn that the problem was never my questions or my weirdness. It was that I kept choosing people and places that couldn't hold them.

So now I pay attention.

Not just to whether someone answers the question, but to how they answer it. The energy they bring. The curiosity. The willingness to play, even when the topic is absurd. Especially when the topic is absurd.

Because if someone can't engage with a hypothetical goose fight, they're probably not going to engage in the way I need when things get hard either. When I need to think out loud. When I need someone to hold space for an idea that isn't fully formed yet. When I need a bit of creative chaos and a lot of patience.

Play isn't trivial. It's one of the most honest tests of connection there is.

And the people who pass that test for you, make sure you hold onto them. They're rarer than you think.