Falling for a Phoney

Victor Wombanyama is the darling of San Antonio. How can a teenager be over 7 ft tall, move like a wind on the basketball court, and say he wants to learn under Pop? In the latest HEB commercial he even let others on the team take the spotlight, and he just gave his beautiful smile and said a few words. He seems to be the real deal.

Others can be just the opposite. One morning when I was at Wilson an attractive young man came into the office to enroll. He brought a piece of paper with his classes and great grades. He and his dad were coming from Colorado, he said, and wanted to be in a small school just outside a larger town so he could be involved in everything. My heart began to sing. I could pair him in informative speaking with Randy, and they would go straight to state. And I could put him in the one act play cast which was already good, and there would be another state winner. The math teacher saw visions of winning number sense contests.The football coach could be seen dancing in the hall because now he had a defensive back who would stop all opponents. I told him the juniors had just started The Scarlet Letter with Hester and her wardrobe, and he said he loved to read and could catch up quickly. I gave him a copy of the novel.

The next day when he didn't come back, we all chalked it up to moving delays. But as each day came and he didn't return, we knew it was all some kind of crazy joke. Why would he do that and say those things? 

In the spring when we were at the district UIL contest, I saw with the other coaches eating the fantastic food they always had at those meetings. For some reason I brought up our mysterious non-student. And then two other coaches joined in to say he had been to their schools and said the same things. This was even crazier. What was he supposed to have gained from tricking 3 schools? There was nothing lost unless you counted the copy of The Scarlet Letter. There were no pictures taken, and this was long before Tik-Tok when he might have made some kind of statement for the world. He lied with such ease and must have been practiced at it.

In the Texas Hill Country from 1880-1904 a man took on the name and medical degree of a dead doctor and practiced medicine. My newest book(shameless plug) A Cibolo Tale tells how he did surgeries, treated burns, gave prescriptions, set broken limbs and had no medical back ground whatsoever. He must have been the greatest scam artist that ever was. People fell for everything he said just as we had fallen for the non-student. Learning to tell the difference when someone is putting on a false front is a worthy talent any time and saves many from broken dreams.