Awesome life moment #73: Met my doppelganger (and we’re not related)
Do you know how weird it is to meet someone who looks just like you, and yet you’re totally unrelated to one another? I do. Allow me to share my story.
Doppelganger: noun;
a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person
I was 19, working in the camera and jewelry section at Kmart, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. One day, in walks a girl, right past the counter, and all I could do was stare. I mean, my mouth was literally hanging open. With the exception of being a shade thinner than me, she looked just like me. Right down to the same height and eyeglass frames (if memory serves I think she was a year older than me). Do you know how disturbing it is to see someone who looks just like you, and you don’t have a twin? Turns out she was a new hire, who didn’t notice me until later in the day.
She worked the front desk, which was directly across from the camera and jewelry section. And it was an angry, elderly woman who finally brought me to her attention. The woman had just made a return, and there was some type of error, so on her way back to the front desk, she glanced at me, and thinking I was the new girl, I caught her wrath. A good five minutes worth of it. She finally paused to take a breath, and that gave me a chance to explain to her that I was not the person who helped her. Still angry, and spewing verbal hatred at me, I finally pointed across the aisle. The lady turned, looked at me, looked at her, and went silent. The girl and I stared at one another until the lady finally said “is this some kind of joke?”
We arranged to take our breaks at the same time, and nearly ran to the break room in the back of the store. There was a barrage of questions, one right after the other, like bullets being fired from a automatic weapon: where are you from, who are your parents, where did you grow up, do you know <insert family names here>, do you have any brothers or sisters? I can actually remember we grabbed each others arms, as if to make sure we weren’t both experiencing some type of mirage. Turns out the girl was from Florida, and we had absolutely no family ties that we could come up with in the 15 minutes that we’d spent firing off questions at one another.
I remember telling my mom: ‘There’s a new girl at the store who looks just like me.‘ And I probably had a look on my face and a tone to my voice that said ‘is there something you want to tell me?’ She brushed me off with a curt ‘uh huh,’ but I persisted. ‘No, I mean she looks just like me.’ After a little more back and forth, I finally convinced her to go to the store and see for herself. And a few days later she did. And she agreed. Her response: ‘You might want to give your dad a call and start asking him some questions.’ She was half joking and half serious. Think about that for a second. The woman who gave birth to me thought this young lady looked like me. How scary a thought is that? (My dad lived two hours away, and I do remember calling him, but I don’t think he was ever able to see her for himself.)
The girl and I had several more conversations over the next few weeks, and I found out she was pregnant with twins (oh the irony). She was also kind of guarded at times, and she made occasional comments that gave me the impression that she may have been ‘on the run’ so to speak, from something or someone. Unfortunately I don’t remember her name (if it even was her real name), and one day she just didn’t show up to work. They called and called, concerned about her whereabouts (especially because she was alone and pregnant), but they never got an answer. Eventually, the line was no longer in service. They held on to her last check for a few weeks, but she never came to pick it up. They tried mailing it, but it came back return to sender.
I saw a news story a few weeks ago that reminded me of this experience, about a photographer named Francois Brunelle, who has spent the last twelve years finding and photographing ‘unrelated twins.’ I also came across an article today in my email inbox that offers a not-so-clear-to-me explanation of how total strangers can look like twins, which reminded me as well, so I thought I’d share this story with you.
You think the world could really handle two of me? Nah! 😉
Still wondering what ever happened to my twin,
Angela