Pickup Lines: the worst line in the deck won the night, because she refused to break character

There were nine of us in a flat that comfortably holds five, the music was off because nobody could agree on anything, and we needed something to do that did not require standing up. So we started drawing pickup lines and saying them to the group, one at a time, and rating the delivery out of five.

My flatmate Dan was the obvious favourite. Dan is the person who talks to strangers at bus stops. He drew a smooth one, something about not being a photographer but being able to picture the two of you together, and he delivered it perfectly, and it got a polite four. Nobody laughed. It was too good. It just sounded like a line, and a line delivered well is somehow the least interesting thing in the room.

Then it got to Priya, who had spent the first twenty minutes apologising for being bad at games. She drew a corny one. I will not do it justice in text, but it was the one about being a broom and sweeping you off your feet. She read it silently first, and we all watched her decide something.

She stood up. In a flat with no space to stand up in. She looked directly at Dan, held it for a good three seconds, and delivered the broom line like she was ending a speech at a wedding. Full eye contact. No smile. Then she sat back down and stared at the floor.

The room came apart. Somebody knocked over a drink. Dan gave her a five and then immediately said he wanted to change his own score down. She got five from all eight of us, which had not happened before and did not happen again for the rest of the night.

The thing I keep thinking about is that hers was objectively the worst line in the deck. That was the whole point. The good lines have nowhere to go, because being smooth is just being smooth. The terrible ones need you to commit, and watching someone commit completely to something that bad is the funniest thing a group of tired people can witness at one in the morning.

Dan has not recovered. We now rate him on a curve.