My grandmother has been married four times, often to younger men, and was known throughout my mother’s childhood, and much to the chagrin of my uncles, as the hottest mother on the block. Retiring from men in her 50s, she now quips that men are only good for two things: breeding and heavy lifting.

Read Death Of The First Date Kiss

Despite her cavalier attitude toward the less fair sex, she still bets me that if we went to a club together, she would walk home with more numbers. Sadly, I have to agree. My grandmother is willing to go up to anyone and start flirting – hot men in Beverly Hills, the women who sell us knock-off handbags in Chinatown, the checkout boy at Wal-Mart. She is filled with compliments, and loving pats on the shoulder, which often fall on the intended victim’s chest. When I am faced with a prospective suitor, my first response is to freeze, so I have no doubt that if we got into a pick-up competition, she would easily come out on top. Plus, as I explain to her, she has age on her side, like Betty White, people find her novel, charming, like a Christmas ornament.

Though Nana, as she is known worldwide, is approaching octogenarian status, she looks far younger than the frosty-highlighted, pant-suited Ms. White. My grandmother wears Michael Stars knits and Prada heels. She loves Marc Jacobs, though she thinks some of his clothes are little dowdy. She can’t stand anything that smacks of vintage, complaining that she’s already worn that outfit in the 50s, 60, 70s, why would she want to wear it again? She hates old people and anything that’s not on sale. And she loves to flirt.

“It’s not that hard, Kristen,” she snorts at me over Skype, videoconferencing having revolutionized her social life. “But then again, I’m like Charlie Sheen, I’ve got tigress blood.”

So I figure that I’ll take her up on her bravado, asking, “Alright then, Nana, what are your flirting secrets?” And this is what she said – the ABCs of picking up men: