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An American slang

Posted by Arash on October 17, 2004

A couple of days ago I was explaining to an American friend of mine that in Farsi , which is my native language, there is an expression that literarily translates into English as ' to put watermelons under someone's arms' which means to say things to some one that they want to hear about themselves, but which aren't genuine. The person who does this thing has the intention of tricking someone into doing something without helping them. For example we have, in our patio, a heavy big old rotten couch which has to be get ridden of, but I am not in the mood to give my brother a hand with the couch, therefore I start taking about how strong he is that he is the man and that he can do it by himself , in other words I say the things that I know my brother wants to hear about himself in order to make him feel good about himself and dump the couch without me taking part in this chore , but when he sees me smiling he realizes what is going on and tells me, " hey, I know what you are trying to do, you are saying all these nice things about me without meaning it, you don't want to help me, you are trying to put watermelons under my arms, but I am sorry it won't work on me you are going to help and there is no way that I am going to do it by myself. and when I was done explaining I asked my American friend if there was an expression in English having the same meaning, and she told me how about "to blow sunshine up some one's ass."
But I haven't been able to find it in any slang dictionaries. Could you please tell me if there is such a slang expression in English or not and if not what American or English equivalent would you recommend for "put watermelons under someone's arms.
THANK YOU

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