Heard on The Judges: _dry-beg_ "a kind of con game"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'll be ready for that.   And maybe next time I try it out on somebody,
it'll finally work.

JL

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 12:18 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Heard on The Judges: _dry-beg_ "a kind of con game"
>
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>
> Judge Greg and his bailiff, Doyle, acted this one out. Essentially,
> the idea is to get free money by letting some chump with feelings for
> you know that you need a large amount of money, then conning him/her
> into "forcing" the money on you, as you protest all the while that you
> couldn't *possibly* take the money and allow the mark to be
> inconvenienced by your trivial needs.
>
> The plaintiff - an older woman thus suckered by her dekkid-younger
> "boyfriend" - for whom they had acted out the game commented that she
> had no idea that it was so common that it had a name.
>
> There's a head-game version of this in which you adamantly refuse to
> allow someone to explain himself - "Hey, it's okay, Jon. You don't
> need to explain. I understand completely" - that I personally have
> used to reduce grown men literally to tears of frustration.
> Apparently, when people try to explain themselves to you, they don't
> just *want* to. They *need* to.
>
> Weird.
>
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
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