Don’t cross a gypsy, boy
January 27th, 2009Several times in the past two days the same woman has pointed to the empty sidewalk in front of me, reached down and pretended to pick up a gold ring that she had been hiding in her hand. The first time she gave it to me although I tried to decline it. She showed me that it was too small to fit her (though that would mean it was certainly too small to fit me) and forced it on me. Then she came back ten seconds later and asked for money. I assume she probably has better luck with people who actually put the ring on (or ones who don’t notice that she is conjuring the ring out of thin air). Her “office” is around the Louvre, but she has so many customers, she didn’t recognize me until she tried the trick for the third time.
In Brazil I had a similar kind of trick played on me, also three times: a guy points at your shoe, you look down to see that it is covered with bird guano. The guy happens to have a shoeshine kit with him and cleans your dirty shoe for 5 reais, then asks for a tip to “even them up”. The first time this happened, I thought it was strange that I hadn’t notice any birds or the mess on my shoe. The second time it happened, I was sure that the shoeshine guy had fouled my shoe, but I didn’t see how he did it. The third time, I figured it out: the guy points at your shoe, you look down and don’t see anything. You look back up at him and say, “What?”. While he’s keeping his eyes locked on yours, he squirts the crud on your shoe and says, “Look!” You look again and see the mess and convince yourself you just didn’t notice it the first time. I made the last guy clean my shoes for free — he denied several times that it was a scam, then finally confessed.
The virtue of his trick over the gypsy ring trick is that your shoes actually end up dirty and you have to do something about it. The ring trick relies on a very feeble thread of obligation created when she offers the ring, and reinforced only slightly if you actually take it.
The best scam that I actually fell victim to was when someone entered my normally locked apartment complex and started ringing doorbells telling the upstairs people he was a downstairs neighbor and vice versa, asking for change to pay the pizza delivery guy. I was suspicious, but as I was on slightly bad terms with my upstairs neighbor, having complained about the noise when he and his band held a full-volume rehearsal for seven hours on a Friday night, I thought I should make an investment in bridge-building. After I closed the door I called the landlord and asked for a description of my upstairs neighbor. It didn’t match the guy at my door, but by that time he was gone. That delayed suspicion was better than Ollie’s, though — he came to my door about an hour later looking for his money and I had to tell him he had been conned. His response: “The dirty dog!”
After that incident, I went and introduced myself to all my neighbors. I also made a personal rule to look at all requests for money as simply requests for money — to ignore the story or trappings that surround the request and decide whether to give money for the sake of charity or in expectation of a return or repayment. I think this has helped me avoid giving money in circumstances that play on the very natural inclination to be obliging, as with the (I suspect) false monk in Thailand.
“Don’t cross a gypsy, boy” is what the old bats in grey pea coats around Picadilly Circus curse you with if you don’t let them put a flower in your buttonhole. If you do let them, they hit you up for cash.
