Guys still seek magic words to woo women

A few days after moving to England in 1993, Shannon Brock, of Dallas, was walking along a street in London when a man approached her. That’s when, while learning about her new city, Brock learned something about herself.

She was an angel. At least in the eyes of one man, who on that beautiful summer evening asked:

“And tell me, my darlin’, did you hurt yourself when you fell from heaven?”

It was a line Brock will never forget.

“He had a thick Irish accent,” she says. “The line probably wouldn’t work if you were from the Bronx.”

It probably wouldn’t work, period, for most women. Neither would “Haven’t I seen you before in my dreams?” or “Is there an airport nearby or is that my heart taking off?”

Pickup lines conjure images of the slick-haired male on the prowl, oozing cologne as gold chains hang out of his half-buttoned shirt.

But even if women aren’t receptive, men are still using lines such as “Hey, my limo’s outside; want to go for a ride?”

“What intelligent human being is going to go for that?” asks Ellen Cawthorn, 37.

Other lines are much worse, and much racier. And although women rarely use pickup lines, sometimes their lines are the bawdiest of all.

“I’ve heard some women come up with some tacky lines that can be more offensive than what comes out of men’s mouths,” Cawthorn says. “Something like, ‘I like them Wranglers – What’s inside?’ “

Better question: What’s inside the heads of the men and women who use these pickup lines? Do they really think they’ll work?

“You have to break the ice some way,” says Gabe Fischbarg, author of “The Guide to Picking Up Girls” (Plume, 2002). “You want to make a good first impression, so you try to be funny.”

Getting a laugh means getting a conversation started, so humor is the goal of most pickup lines. That’s what lawyer Alan Kazdoy strived for before he got married eight years ago. The line he always wanted to use:

Did you happen to see a Medal of Honor around here? I believe I just dropped mine.

“I think women like people who are funny,” says Kazdoy, 37. “But a lot of times we might try to be funny and it doesn’t work.”

And sometimes the humor is just plain offensive. Red Carnley heard this from a guy:

You know who you look like? My unborn baby’s mother.

“I just started laughing,” Carnley says.

And she didn’t stop until Mr. Wrong was long gone.

Offensive pickup lines are the sign of a jerk, but bad pickup lines don’t mean a guy is Mr. Wrong. That’s according to April Masini, a relationship advice columnist and the author of “Date Out of Your League” (Turnkey, 2003).

“Women should be gentle with men who have bad pickup lines,” Masini says. “In fact, the ones who do have the bad pickup lines may just be guys who don’t pick up women a lot.”

They certainly don’t succeed at it anyway, which is why many women wonder why guys won’t skip the pickup lines and simply introduce themselves.

Even Fischbarg – despite writing a smooth-operator book that describes talking with a woman as “laying rap” – says that the best pickup line is just to say, “Hi, how are you?”

That’s got to be better than “Is it hot in here, or is it just you?” or “Hey, baby, you must know karate, because your body is kickin’.”

Gerry Isaacs, who runs a singles club for people older than 35, agrees. She was once asked by an older man:

“Where have you been all of my life?” Her answer: “I wasn’t born most of it.”

The man would’ve done much better had he just told Isaacs his name.

“That’s far more important and more impressive when a man does that,” Isaacs says.

“If you’re sincere and you really want to meet somebody, unless you’re out there prowling, I think it’s going to get you a lot further.”

But sometimes a good line can work. The line about falling from heaven got Brock’s attention – and a date for her Irish admirer. Twelve years later, Brock is back in Dallas and the two are still an item.

“It’s probably something that it didn’t take him a minute to think up, but it was a good line,” she says.

“Anybody who thinks I’m an angel and hopes I didn’t get hurt when I fell to Earth, that’s my kind of guy.”