Now I’m on offense and they’re back on defense. I just turned the tables in the blink of an eye. I was just about to ask you if I could borrow a few bucks.”īoom. Right after someone has spilled their hardluck circumstances, before they have a chance to ask me for anything, I say something like, “You too? I’ve had some bad luck lately myself. One of my favorite maneuvers - The Slick Cut Off - is one I learned from Muddy Banks in Tupelo, Mississippi in the early seventies. After all, you offered.Īs a mark, I try and always be in on my toes when I sense The Request coming my way. This has just saved them the groveling they were prepared to do and, on top of that, they feel like they didn’t ask you for anything. You’ve just now opened the door to what is known as The Money Beatdown. They usually start with a sob story hoping to provoke a response from you like, “Hey, if you need to borrow some money, let me know if I can help you out.” Or they have a chance of getting in on the ground floor of the greatest business deal ever, like edible kittens. They’re waiting for a check that should be in the mail. This begins with the person expressing some sort of predicament they’re in. The art of borrowing money has many stages to it.
Now you’re left wondering if they really need that car repaired, or if they’re hoping to score a bag of heroin, or if they’re looking to take Hopalong in the sixth to win. And guess who they’re looking at to be their umbrella? Most of the time they’re coming to you because they know that you have been responsible with your funds, saving them for a rainy day, while they have not been responsible with their own funds. It’s usually a relative or some close friend. We’re at the point where it’s every man (or gal) for themselves.Īt some point in our lives, someone has approached us to borrow money. Most of us work hard for our money, so to let it go toward something that’s not for us or our family is hard, especially when the average American has less than four hundred dollars in their savings account. I don’t trust people with my money, especially when they think it’s theirs. Instead of digging a water well in Tibet, some shyster is sitting in first class on his way to Greece on my dime. I wonder if my money is really going to what it is purported to. Yes, I know I’m called on to be a cheerful giver, but I just haven’t gotten there yet. I encounter this resistance when I donate to a charitable organization. So, to part with it for any other purpose than for our own needs is very difficult. We need it to buy necessities in life like a place to live, food, transportation, shoes, cell phones, Netflix and lattes.
Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “To receive with the implied or expressed intention of returning the same or an equivalent.” I, on the other hand, define it as getting something you need from some sucker with the intention of returning it if you were to somehow win the lottery. “Borrow” is a sneaky word with several meanings. Universal Pictures struck accidental gold with “Wicked” (the studio had bought the rights to turn the book, about the Wicked Witch of the West, into a film, but was later approached to make it into a musical, which has grossed $3 billion).There are generally two types of people: those who lend money, and those who borrow money. Hollywood studios have always licensed rights to their films now they are trying to produce them on stage. Now the business is belting out high notes again, with new shows, new markets and new interest in old hits. In the 1980s Mr Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, another Brit, invented the “mega musical”, with big-budget shows such as “Phantom” and Mr Mackintosh’s “Les Misérables”. Musicals had their first big boom in the 1940s, when Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma!”. Since it debuted in London 27 years ago “The Phantom of the Opera”, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, has grossed $5.6 billion worldwide, more than any film or television show. “Cats” probably made a 3,500% return for its initial investors. Musicals have odds like venture capital: only one in ten makes money, and two out of ten lose it all. “YOU can’t make a living, but you can make a killing,” goes the Broadway adage.
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