Digital ID Coach

Becoming Nobody

April 13th, 2009

No comments

This story, Escape from America by Bruce Falconer, is about a man (Charles Albert Stopford III) who took on another identity and became someone else (Lord Christopher Buckingham). The quote below is from a point in time where the author meets up with Buckingham.

In spite of this, as we talked, Buckingham seemed nervous. He spoke in hushed tones, so quietly that my recorder sometimes had trouble registering his words. His eyes searched nearby tables for anyone who might be listening in. Several times he referred to his fear of being followed. I asked what he was running from. “I don’t know,” he said. “I won’t know until the circumstance arises.” He possessed the paranoid instinct of a survivalist, feverishly preparing for some imagined catastrophe that would never come. But like any lie lived too long, his had taken on elements of truth. Journalists had been phoning the Stopford family in Florida, asking where he was and whether he had returned to Europe. The family would not say. Buckingham clearly pleasured in the chase. Citing his amnesia, he still refused to explain what had first compelled the young Charles Stopford to abandon himself, as if sensing that the mystery, as long as it endured, would keep his pursuers on the hunt.

If the hunters ever got too close, Buckingham assured me he was prepared to disappear again. He was certain he would leave no traces. “I have vanished many times,” he told me. “It’s nice to just be no one, which makes the authorities really angry. When you vanish from the radar, it annoys them. There are people in offices for that.” He laughed at their expense. A year before, I would have cheered him on. But now, having met him and seen the life he had led, the sacrifices he had made (and forced others to make on his behalf), I could not bring myself to do it. The reality of his experience didn’t match the fantasy. Buckingham was not the dashing figure I had imagined; he was like anyone else, but seemed to lack something fundamental. Lately, I had been troubled by the recognition that, despite our talks, I could never really know him. It now occurred to me that he did not know himself. He had been running for so long, in so many guises, that his essence — whatever it is that makes us who we are — was now hopelessly diluted. He had desired to become someone else; now he was no one at all.

The story reminded me of the movie Catch Me If You Can, “a true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor.” Of note, Abagnale’s activities took place in the mid-1960s, before computer databases were so common and documentation of our every move and transaction were so thorough. These days it would be much more difficult to pull something like this off.

Coaching moment: Have you ever told a lie? If so, you may have had the trouble of trying to keep track of all related details. Now imagine that someone followed you around and took detailed notes of everything that happened. Not only that, the person is standing behind you with those notes. How likely is it that you’d be comfortable telling a lie now?

What if the person didn’t take accurate notes? In fact, the note takers aren’t taking full notes. There are bits of the picture that give a meaning to you, but are missing from the notes. For example, if you’ve ever bought a gift book from Amazon, the subject matter of that book will trigger Amazon suggestions for new books you might buy, even if you have no interest in that subject. Similarly, the credit card companies keep track of everything you buy, and correlate that information with all kinds of other behavior in other databases. However, that correlation doesn’t mean they really know who you are, right?

What kind of partial stories do you want to know about? Are there letters you can write to find out?

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks