Picture this: a 17-year-old boy who works part-time at Pizza Hut pulls up in front of his house one day in a stunning Porsche. His parents are stunned by the sight of the luxurious car and immediately demand an explanation.
“Where did you get that car?” they ask, completely bewildered.
“I bought it today,” calmly responds the teen.
His mom’s concern gets the better of her as she demands, “With what money, young man? We know how much a Porsche costs, and you cannot afford it!”
The boy explains, “Well, it’s used, and I got a good deal. This one only cost me 20 dollars.”
Shocked, his mom exclaims, “Who on earth would sell a car like that for 20 dollars?!”
“The woman up the street,” the boy replies. “I don’t know her name – she just moved in. She ordered a pizza, and when I delivered it to her, she asked me if I wanted to buy a Porsche for 20 dollars.”
Unable to contain their curiosity and anger, the boy’s dad and mom rush over to their new neighbor’s house, ready to demand an explanation. To their surprise, they find their new neighbor calmly planting flowers in her front yard.
Approaching her with determination, the dad speaks up, “I’m the father of the kid you just sold a sports car to for $20. I need an explanation from you!”
The woman, still focused on her gardening, looks up and calmly responds, “Well, this morning, I received a phone call from my husband. I thought he was on a business trip in Florida, but it turns out he has run off to Hawaii with his secretary and has no intention of coming back.”
Perplexed, the mom interjects, “What on earth does that have to do with selling our son a Porsche for $20?”
Smiling brightly, the new neighbor pauses for a moment before answering, “Well, my husband asked me to sell his new Porsche and send him the money. So, I did.”
“People Only Know Me as a Freak,” The Wolf Man Struggles to Find a Job Outside the Circus
Jesús Aceves has hypertrichosis, which makes his hair grow abundantly over his face and back. Because of his condition, he’s also known as The Wolf Man. But he’s tired of this alias and wants to live a normal life.
Meet Jesús Aceves, a 55-year-old man born with a condition called hypertrichosis, which means he has abnormal hair growth over his body, especially his face. Although married with kids, Jesús isn’t fully happy with his living conditions. He says he and his family suffer discrimination. In an interview, one of his kids mentioned, “People call me names, and they even tell their kids not to be my friends.”
He worked in the circus all his life, traveling through several cities. But now, he’s tired of being seen as a freak. As a consequence of years on the road, he’s been known as The Wolf Man.
Back home and not in the circus anymore, he’s facing another challenge: finding a “normal” job. He needs to support his family since his wife works in temporary jobs.
After several failed job interviews, he agreed to try something he had always avoided: shave his face. He relied on his family barber to transform him, even creating eyebrows and lashes.
The experience was difficult since the face is an extremely sensitive body area, but both he and his wife believed that simply by shaving, he would be able to find a job.
Jesús did several interviews, and it’s confident that now he’ll find somewhere to work besides the circus. If this happens, he must shave his face every 2 days.
Although rare, some conditions aren’t impossible to have. Luckily, people find a way to overcome the difficulties a rare condition brings and strive in life. Hannah Tyre, for example, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, meaning that her bones break very easily. But her love for makeup made her an internet influencer, reaching millions of followers. We hope that, by reaching the mainstream media, people with genetic diseases won’t suffer more discrimination.
Preview photo credit A True Story / Youtube
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