Ann Piela Brock is a Scorpio.

Heather Fortin is a Cancer.

How do I know this?

I asked them.

Asking a lady her sign is a pickup line invented roughly five minutes after astrology came on the scene. It’s a great ice-breaker sure to loosen the will of the prettiest girl in the bar. The chicks love it. Ask anyone.

“Midlife crisis,” says Heather, swooning. “Not up to date on pickup lines.”

“Are you serious?” says Ann, fanning herself.

“My sign,” says a hot number named Maureen, “says ‘do not disturb.’”

You see? They want me. How could they not?

Pickup lines are everywhere. Always have been. You don’t have to be in a nightclub or a hot tub to hear one. Little boys lay them on little girls in schoolyards. Plumbers lay them on widows with leaky pipes.

Straight, gay, any funky combination thereof. If you are not the type to live your whole life alone in your mom’s garage, you will resort to pickup lines and you will probably hear a few.

Unless you’re a middle-age fellow. Middle-age fellows have too much class.

“It’s either the young guys 20-25,” says Heather, “or mid-life crisis guys, 40-50.”

But that sounds like science, and there’s just no place for that in this business. What we really want to know is whether these lines are going to work.

“Only once,” says Ann, a waitress before she became a surgical technician. “Relationship lasted eight years.”

Which is more than you want, generally. A well-placed pickup line is meant to secure companionship for a night, not for years, or worse, a lifetime.

“A line did work on me,” Heather admits. “He kept telling me to ‘Lose the zero and get with the hero, which is funny cause I didn’t have a boyfriend. I was with him for two years.”

Two years! Dilute your lines a little, fella. It’s not a commitment you’re after.

Heather and Ann are likely to hear more lines than the rest of us. Not only because they both look like supermodels (that’s what’s called a stealth line, right there), but because of what they do. Ann the waitress and Heather the bartender are exposed to more lascivious guys than, say, Matilda the welder.

If you haven’t hit on a waitress or bartender, you probably haven’t been out enough. When a girl is serving you drinks or food, you just have to profess your love for her. Because as a drunken male, you know that if you keep plugging away, over hours if need be, her power to resist will crumble before your eyes.

Am I right? Macho fist bump.

“I have been tending bar for 11 years,” says Heather, “and never dated anyone I met while working. You’re not going to meet your dream guy in a bar.”

Little wonder. The lines Heather gets are nasty.

“I’ve been called ‘milk’ because I do a body good,” she says.

Cue womp womp womp music to signal failure.

Ann, at 47, is a little less rigid about things. She admits that she might fall for a line from a customer one day. Maybe. But probably not yours.

“It depends on what’s said,” she reports. “Mostly, I smile and say ‘no thank you.’”

Which is a response most guys have heard, I’m told. Don’t really know for sure. It never happened to me.

Not that being a waitress guarantees you will be hit on relentlessly by men who develop their pitches from the Book of Dirty Limericks.

“I work at the Village Inn. Not a big ‘pickup’ place,” says Shannon Wilson, of the legendary Auburn restaurant. “I’ve had a couple guys ask me outright if I had a boyfriend, but no fancy pickup lines! Not sure guys in Maine are savvy or creative enough for that!”

Au contraire, mon cheri. Sometimes it’s just hard to distinguish a clever line from ordinary conversation. The pitch Ann fell for didn’t end with “they’d look great on the floor next to my bed” or anything so base. The fellow in question asked her if he should buy the same model Nissan that she was driving.

No, really. That worked.

Say cheese

When Brianna Masselli is between college semesters, she works at Graziano’s in Lisbon, where the wine and carbs flow. She introduces herself as ‘Brie,’ and how do you think it goes from there?

“I often get ‘Brie, like the cheese? Do you get stronger with age?”

Which is a fine effort. It’s unique and it’s personal. The problem is, she’s heard it hundreds of times. The originality is lost through repetition.

Originality is a problem. There seems to be a master list of pickup pitches, and amateur studs go back to it over and over. When asked, both men and women could spew bunches of them without pausing to think very long. They sound better if you can muster your best Lou Rawls voice while reading them.

They range from the quaint:

• Is your father a thief? Because somebody stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.

• Are your legs tired? ‘Cus you’ve been running through my mind all night.

• You must be a library book because I’m checking you out.

• Are you from Tennessee? Because you really are the only ten-I-see.

• If I were in charge of the alphabet I’d put U and I together.

To the suggestive:

• Is there a mirror in your pocket? Because I can see myself in your pants.

• Call me Fred Flintstone because I can make your bed rock.

• I’m an organ donor. Need anything?

To the baffling:

• Do you live around here often?

To the unsettling:

• Does this rag smell like chloroform?

To the thousands that I can’t repeat here.

If none of these work for you, you might try a new haircut. Or a new cologne or a new hobby to take your mind off things. You could also try some advice from the ladies.

“If she seems the least bit intelligent,” advises Heather, “don’t use a line. Unless she is drunk and wants to use you, too.”

“No lines,” says Ann. “Just start a conversation.”

Of course. But be aware that most of us choose to start that conversation with “Hey, baby.”

And we sound like Lou Rawls when we say it.

Pickup line facts

The first pickup line is believed to have been delivered by a Homo habilis man 2.5 million years ago who uttered: “unka wunka wazooey” to a cave-dwelling female. Translated to current English, the primitive appears to compare parts of his anatomy to that of a dinosaur.

He was not successful.

According to recent medical discoveries, you can contract certain social diseases from a particularly raunchy line.

It only takes a woman four arm muscles to slap a man in the face.

More muscles are involved in a groin kick.

Pickup lines online

For a NSFW illustrated guide to pickup lines, visit marklaflamme.com/lines

For an extensive list of lines, some NSFW, visit linesthataregood.com

From the mouths of babes

Ron Hood hears the best pickup lines from studs in training.

“I remember years back my son and one of his friends used to go through Shop’n Save and say pick-up lines to cashiers they thought were pretty. Here are a few I think they used to say:

1. Are you a parking ticket? You got fine written all over you.

2. If you were words on a page, you’d be what they call fine print.

3. Do you have the time? No, the time to write down my number?

4. Excuse me, I think you have something in your eye. Nope, it’s just a sparkle.

Thank goodness these boys are now men!”

I’m totally stealing number one.