Hi there. Come here often? I’ll bet your legs are tired. Cus you’ve been running through my mind all night. Say, is your father a thief? Cus he stole the stars from the sky and placed them in your eyes.

Or something.

Forgive me. I’m practicing bad pickup lines. It’s not hard, either. These things come easy to a guy. We hear a clever line in a blockbuster movie and we think it will wow any lady within earshot.

Sad fact is, most of the ladies I know have heard ’em all. Not to mention some homemade lines with success rates of just below “not a chance in hell.”

Men are dogs. They might be happily married and slightly afraid of women. But give them a little encouragement from back-slapping guy friends, they think they’re clever as William Shakespeare.

Not me, of course. Back in my hound dog days, I knew I was a bumbling oaf. My No. 1 line without question was: “So… You think pro wrestling is fake? Or what?”

I read it in a book once. Figured it might be just stupid enough to work. It wasn’t.

But I digress. I have a co-worker who draws cheesy pickup lines and catcalls wherever she goes. I asked her to keep track of the real clunkers.

“Hey, baby,” a budding romantic said to her the other day. “You’ve got world-class legs.”

Which would be a great line if you happen to be a running coach. But this guy wasn’t and so the line left my friend confused and slightly amused. Not exactly what a good line is supposed to do.

“He even offered to be my “sugar daddy,” my friend said.

Here’s one that will split your sides: “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?”

A real screecher right? Doomed to failure from the very first syllable, wouldn’t you say? Not quite. Sometimes, apparently, the classics hit the mark.

“It was said to me before, and I caved,” said another friend, a very intelligent lady who fell for that vintage line. “It’s still rather flattering that a guy would debase himself by saying something like that.”

Whoa! So sometimes, the lame ones impress. Good news for the swaggering types in bars, sweaty construction workers and groups of hounds circling downtown blocks in cars.

Or is that really where most of those atrocious lines come from? I have lady friends who hear come-ons from their bosses and casual acquaintances, otherwise respectable men who run companies, treat patients or enforce laws. These ladies run into catcalls in grocery stores, in elevators and at Little League baseball games.

Bad pickup lines are everywhere. And they’ve been around forever, I’m convinced. Why, I’ll bet cave men, wild with a need to propagate the species, used to grunt at cave women in a particular way.

“I may not be Fred Flintstone,” those grunts would imply, “but I can sure make your bed rock.”

Not bad, Neanderthal dude. I’ll bet that earned you a come-hither look and a heated night in the cave. A million years later, that same guy is driving around in a Camaro and shouting the same line out the window.

There are some who will argue that women are delivering a lot of lines themselves these days. And I’m sure it’s true. I just haven’t heard any, personally. Never. Not once. Not even a well-delivered inquiry into the authenticity of professional wrestling.

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