The Intuitive Reasonings of Jessica

To alleviate winter break boredom, I have been reading a lot of books. Well, not exactly a lot, but significantly more than I did at school, where the literature I encountered was mostly of the text book variety.

One of these books, as you have probably guessed by now, is Catch Me If You Can. I saw the movie a few years erstwhile; however, the book is far more commoving in my opinion. Frank Abagnale is sheer genius. He spent 11 months working as a real doctor, somehow managing to get the nurses and interns to do all the work since he had no medical training whatsoever. He also worked as a lawyer for several months. To pull that off, he forged a transcript from Harvard and took the bar exam (passing on his third try).

My favorite escapade of his took place at an airport (where Frank spent a great deal of time--his favorite of his numerous identities was that of Frank Williams, co-pilot for Pan-Am. (He had no clue how to actually fly a plane). One night, he noticed that when the airport stores closed, the clerks all deposited the day's profits in a bank vault in the airport. The following evening, the clerks found Frank by the vault dressed as a security guard next to a sign that read "Night deposit vault out of order. Please make deposits with security officer." No one suspected foul play. The policemen even helped carry the stolen money to Frank's car. He made $62,800 that night. And, being the considerate crook he was, he called the airport the next morning to let them know where everything he didn't want (checks, receipts, coins) was (in the bathtub of the hotel room he had just checked out of).

The amazing thing is that it is all true. It's not "based on a true story" as Hollywood tends to be. (Although, in this case, I think the movie was fairly accurate.)

So, those of you who still have a couple more days of break, read this book! It's a pretty quick read--I started yesterday, and I'm already 2/3 the way through it.

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