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داستان انگلیسی آن سوی تپه

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داستان انگلیسی آن سوی تپه

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ACTIVE LISTENING MAIN STORY

OVER THE HILL

Today it’s common to hear stories of people lying about their age. The obsession with youth is powerful. In Hollywood, the pressure to be young hits women especially hard. Many actresses feel pressure to lie about their age to get the many choice roles that often go to younger women. Recently 37-year-old actress Maggie Gyllenhaal lost a part in a movie because she was supposedly over the hill. She was shocked to hear that she was too old play the love interest of a 55-year-old man.

While it’s understandable that some people feel pressure to appear younger, we rarely hear about people pretending to be older.

Calvin Graham was a U.S. Navy soldier during WWII. The ship he was on faced some of the fiercest naval battles of the war. During one battle in 1942, 47 of his fellow soldiers died, and Graham was burned and his front teeth were knocked out. Unlike his comrades who were grown men, Calvin was just 12 years old. When Calvin was just 11, his cousins were killed in the war. Calvin decided that he needed to join the fight. He told his mother he was going to visit his grandmother, but instead he faked some documents and headed to the nearest military office. At just 12 years of age, 157 cm tall, and 56 kg in weight, he used the deepest voice he could and convinced them he was 17. After a year at war, the military discovered how young he was. Graham was thrown in military prison for three months until his sister wrote letters to the newspapers about the “baby vet.” The military was pressured to release Graham, but his war medals were taken from him, and he was denied the medical benefits that were usually given to veterans. More than 30 years later, the U.S. government recognized their

mistreatment of Graham and gave him the medical benefits and medals he deserved.

The notorious Frank William Abagnale also played the part of an older man many times, but he didn’t just lie about his age. He is one of the greatest conmen who ever lived. He successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, a prison inspector, an FBI agent, and a lawyer.

Amazingly he did this all between the ages of 15 and 21. To make people believe him, he used a variety of techniques including fake documents, and sheer confidence. The word ‘con’ or ‘conman’ in English comes from the word ‘confidence’. Abagnale had confidence in spades. He was just a teenager throughout much of his cons, but he made people believe he was old enough to have jobs that take many years of training.

Abagnale started off with small cons. He created bank accounts under multiple fake names and wrote checks through those accounts. His cons soon became more audacious. For example, he noticed that United Airlines used a deposit box at the airport to drop off their end of day cash. He bought a security guard uniform and put a sign on the deposit box that said the box was broken, and all money should be given to the security guard. Years later he joked about how ridiculous his plan was saying, “How can a drop box be out of order?” Abagnale next decided to impersonate a pilot because he wanted to travel the world, and pilots can fly for free. He first created a fake airline employee ID and then told the airline he had lost his uniform. He then faked a pilot’s license, picked up his new uniform, and he was ready to go. Deadheading is a word used in the airline world, for off-duty pilots getting free rides on flights if there is extra space. Abagnale took full advantage of deadheading. He flew over 1 million miles to 26 countries between the ages of 16 and 18. Once he was even invited into the cockpit and allowed to take over the controls. There were 140 people on the flight who could have lost their lives that day. “I couldn’t even fly a kite,” he says. Recognizing how dangerous it was, he quickly turned on the autopilot.

Abagnale’s most audacious disguises were yet to come. When he was 18, he faked being a medical doctor in his 30s, which unfortunately almost led to the death of a small baby. A year later, he pulled off the con of being a Harvard Law Grad in his mid-20s and ended up working for the State of Alabama as a lawyer. He soon quit before his coworkers could out him as a fraud.

Abagnale saw everything as a game. “There was the satisfaction of actually getting away with it. The more I got away with, the more of a game it became; a game I knew I would ultimately lose, but a game I was going to have fun playing…”

Abagnale’s lies eventually caught up to him. He was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was let out after just five years and given a job working for the FBI teaching them the tricks of conmen. 35 years later, Abagnale continues to advise the FBI and runs a company advising businesses on how to avoid fraud.

Graham and Abagnale had clear motives for lying about their age, but Rick Rosner’s reason for lying is a little more complicated. Rosner was an extremely bright child who learned to read at an adult level at just 3and-a-half years of age. Rosner was smart but was hopeless socially.

He got into bodybuilding and wore the cool clothes, but his classmates weren’t buying it. Despite his big muscles and leather jacket, he was still a nerd. With his impressive academic record, he probably could have entered Harvard after he graduated. Instead, he obsessed over his failed high school career. In addition to being a failure socially, he also obsessed over his IQ score. After finding out that he had failed to score at a genius level on a high school IQ test, he decided to return to high school. This time, he’d do it right. He’d get a girlfriend and become a genius.

Over the next ten years, Rosner faked over 40 documents and attended four different high schools always pretending to be a 17year-old 4th-year HS student. The first time he did this, he again failed to be one of the cool, popular kids, but he still enjoyed the experience.

Rosner entered high school three more times until the age of 27. As he got older, he realized it was creepy to go after high school girls, but he had other reasons for staying in high school. He strangely enjoyed the monotony of high school. Rosner was always fascinated by physics, and he would sit in the back of the class and develop his theory of the universe.

Rosner graduated high school for the last time in New York City at the age of 27. At that time, he was working as a bouncer and stripper by night and high school student by day. Today, he is a writer and has written for over 2,500 episodes of TV, including being a regular writer for the Jimmy Kimmel show. In addition to writing, Rosner is obsessed with IQ tests. He has spent hundreds of hours studying for and taking IQ tests and has the 2nd highest IQ score in the world. He now thinks that IQ tests are not accurate at measuring intelligence and says anyone can practice enough to increase their score. He also jokes about his many years of IQ test study saying, “You have to take points off for wasting my time.”

Graham, Abagnale, and Rosner all used age as a form of deception.

Most of us have never gone to such an extreme, but many of us do go to great lengths to look younger. Some of us have even lied about our age when the time was right. Sometimes it’s better to be younger, but in other cases it’s better to be older. The simple truth is that most of us do care what others think about us. And what others think about us is often affected by how old we look. On the other hand, they say that the older we get, the less we care about what other people think. What do you think? Is that a good thing?