Some people just have that gift of being able to be more than one person at a time.
Many of them are called "actors."
And the rest are called "felons," because they are perpetrating frauds.
Take this case - a man appeared in District Court in Las Vegas to plead guilty to felony fraud. He lived 32 years under another name after claiming to be dead these 32 years.
He was born Arthur Gerald Jones and he took it on the lam from Chicago, trying to get away from his mobster friends (and enemies) and a ton of gambling debt.
Not to mention his wife and three children.
25 years later, he was declared legally dead in Illinois, but by then, he was 25 years into a new life as Joseph Richard Sandelli. He was working at Ramparts sports gambling book, but when he went to get a driver's license, an eagle-eyed civil servant at the Nevada DMV noticed that the Social Security number he gave belonged to one Clifton Goodenough of Arizona.
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| "Sandelli" |
All this raises a lot of questions, namely, who is Sandelli for real? And are there two people running around named Clifton Goodenough?
I once gained admission to a ticket-only trade show at Baltimore's fabulous Convention Center by borrowing a name tag from a co-worker named Earl. My ability to assume a different identity is nonexistent. All day long, people called me "Earl," and I stared blankly ahead.
Of course, as a kid, I always kept a fake name in my mind in case I was ever grabbed by some adult demanding to know just who I thought I was. I kept the name "Pete Larsen" ready to use, but never had to.
And a lot of people I know have their own real names, and the names that the Starucks barista writes on their cup.
But all this makes me wonder, if I should suddenly decide to abscond for parts unknown and begin life anew (as if!), what would be a name I could use? I always wanted to be named "Leon" or "Tito."
However, my bland, unprepossessing European countenance is hard to look upon as anything but "nondescript" and "English," so I have to rule out the surnames "Javier," "Di Martini," and "Ying Cheung." Again, I can't fake a thing.
But it does occur to me that if I were to set out on a life of crime, I could update my junior high school name and go as "Pete Larceny."
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I once went to a trade show at which the entertainment was a surprise drop-in by a troupe of sky-diving impersonators who called themselves the Flying Elvises. The giveaway was a T-shirt bearing, in immense script across the front, "NOBODY KNOWS I'M ELVIS."
Years later, I was pumping gas and the old guy at the next pump grinned and said, "Hey, Elvis!" In an uncharacteristically bad mood and forgetting my attire, I said something witty like, "What the hell are you talking about?" His face fell and he looked away. Poor guy.
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