Pick up lines, I always wondered whether they actually worked. Some original Indian pick up lines like say “Hello Madam, I am your one and only Adam!” or “I want to make friendships with you!” always draw an extremely disgusted response as I have heard. Though I have never actually been there when such pick lines were used in public, but I do know for a fact that they used quite often. Now it never ceases to amaze me that these guys never figured that “Friendships” was incorrect English and that nobody ever seems to point it out to them. Well the actual users of these lines (branded cheesy and hogwash) are more often than not branded as losers, in some very special cases, total losers, born losers et al.

Extensive reading on female psychology in my “I want to be Mel Gibson” (What Women Want?) phase had me convinced that when a guy successfully (termed as success, as guys tend to believe girls are a quest, I am no different) makes sensible conversation with a girl and asks her out (on a date), she decides as he is making his approach, whether it is a yes or no in her reply. This is regardless of what he says (at most times, not all, it cannot be obviously absurd). The general expectation is that she is asked, in mostly a nice, charming and polite manner. The words could even be a witty pick up line!

This refutes the theories that pick up lines actually work (most guys think they do work), and that girls decide much before the actual even takes place. Now for a guy like me who has never had a girlfriend nor a date and no girls who are friends (for helpful advice, girls have this phenomenal intuition about other girls) this seems like a task akin to climbing Mount Everest. How to make the approach? More reading would help, so I bought another set of books on reading the body language of women. Since the hormones as usual drive me crazy, my will and speed of reading increased to a vast extent. So I read it all, come-hither signs, preening gestures, subtle signals and this I thought would be the best learning (though asking a girl would have taught me ten times as much I persisted).

Pretty confident that I had the thinking of girls figured out and refreshing my current girl knowledge by reading Cosmo, Femina and other women oriented magazines. I started to analyze the behavior of women and started making calculated but general assumptions. Though this helped me in understanding what to do and how to ask a girl out, I lacked the essential ingredient (no intention to objectify women) in this mix, a girl to ask out? Turns out my general assumptions were anything but accurate and as the girls change so do their reactions. There have been actual cases of “Friendships” working and even the most polite and classy requests for a date have been rejected outright. Though it has always bothered me that the undeserving guys get the best girls, I always wondered, why is it so?

After all that reading and research, I was and am back to square one. Little idea what of women think, by personal experience, what I say at different times is interpreted in various ways, though strangely I meant it in the same way. Maybe one day I will ask a girl out and just might succeed, though what will make me succeed will always be a mystery. Will it be a pick up line, or the abstinence from their use, maybe the attitude or the look? God only knows! The female version, the male version will not unless he is told what actually works!