I started picking up girls around the time I was 13 or 14. Well, that’s not exactly true. That’s when I started thinking about picking up girls. My friends, too.

This is how it worked for us. A group of us would walk down the street behind a bunch of girls and we’d be asking each other, “Got a good pickup line?” Nobody did. In the meantime, the girls would be walking ahead of us, giggling to each other, well aware of our presence but not doing anything much to help us. God only knows what they were asking each other.

It usually ended up with the girls wandering off disappointed and us standing around still asking each other, “Got a good pickup line?”

It wasn’t until I was in my divorced 50s that I figured out a really good pickup line. Oh sure, I knew all the old dependable standards like, “Come around here often?” or “Hi, what’s your sign?” or “Can I buy you a drink?” But that was only after I figured out that they weren’t as dependable or effective as they were touted to be.


But before that I had to learn that the girls were almost as interested in meeting the boys and the women in meeting the men (not necessarily me, by the way) as the men were interested in meeting them. What a concept! Hey guys, I have news for you: It works both ways. I’ll say it again: It works both ways!

So what was that magic pickup line it took me so long to learn? It goes like this. Repeat after me — “Hi, my name is Paul. What’s yours?”

OK, now back to when I was 13. Our next dilemma was, “I don’t know how to talk to girls.” It was as if they were a different species rather that just the opposite sex. (However, the jury is still out on that different species issue.) Today I cannot imagine why we were so concerned about what to talk about back then.* What was there, anyway? School, sports, the latest movie, chocolate or vanilla, something to do after school, and that’s about it.

Of course, whatever we boys talked about, it had to be as macho as possible so as to impress the girls. Best hitter, fastest runner, strongest weightlifter, etc. Strange how we thought they’d be interested in that. I can’t help wondering how it would have gone if we had been smart enough to talk about the latest fashion color, the newest lipstick, my cousin’s new baby.

*Come to think about it, what do they talk about today? (Correction: What do they text about today?) “Wazup,” “Nuttin,” “WWU,” “OMG.”

— Paul Burri is an entrepreneur, inventor, columnist, engineer and iconoclast. He is not in the advertising business, but he is a small-business counselor with the Santa Barbara chapter of Counselors to America’s Small Business-SCORE. The opinions and comments in this column are his alone and do not represent the opinions or policies of any outside organization. He can be reached at pburri@west.net. Click here for previous Paul Burri columns. Follow Paul Burri on Twitter: @BronxPaul