Doppelgangers

I was walking to the building today and I had a small conclusion that my weekend posts are probably going to be published late. Since the office staff comes in Monday through Friday, the other RC's and I are off-duty before 4pm, which can be set aside for endeavors like a daily blog. On the weekends however, I am basically on-duty from when I wake up to when I go to bed. Since I write my blog on my personal computer, I have to wait until I kick students out of my apartment, hence the late publish times. When it comes to reading my blog, it's not going to have a huge impact in the long run, but it something blog-related I was thinking about today. (Of course, all of this is negated those times when I have a Saturday or Sunday, like this upcoming Saturday.)

Before I forget, today's holidays are No Housework Day and Metric System Day. Not doing housework? Well... okay, holiday. You twisted my arm. Oddly enough, I wanted to anti-celebrate by doing some notable cleaning, because my apartment has definitely seen better days in terms of cleanliness. I didn't end up doing anything too crazy for Metric System Day. It ended up being another gorgeous day today and as I drove some students into town, we talked about the weather. One of the students commented on it being quite hot and it led into small talk about Fahrenheit and Celsius. Again, nothing too crazy, but more of an intellectual holiday.

So, doppelgangers. I'm not sure if other people get this as much, but over the years, I've been approached and told that I look exactly like someone else they know OR a friend of mine says they saw an exact lookalike of me where they were at. Let's list some of them, shall we?

1. It was a summer in high school and I was working at the theater, specifically "Into the Woods". One of the actresses who came up from the Twin Cities area said that I looked really similar to an ex-boyfriend she had... except I had better glasses.

2. Another summer, I was a student leader at a Catholic conference. Our group of student leaders included teens from across the Midwest, including a girl from Ohio. She told me pretty early on in the retreat that I looked just like an ex-boyfriend of hers. There must have been some lingering things to work out because during a time of intense prayer, she put her head on my shoulder and was saying "I'm so sorry."

3. Okay, so I'm listing these based on which scenarios come to mind first, not necessarily chronologically. When I started out high school, I was told that I looked pretty similar to a student who just graduated the year beforehand. His name was Eric and he was had a big part to play (heh) in the school's theater program and some with the music department as well. I did follow in his footsteps in that extent, and one year, I did win an award that was in his namesake for versatility and dedication with the Drama Club and their productions. Eric is kind of a different case because I actually know him and people said we had a fair number of similarities but weren't identical. (Also, not an ex-boyfriend. Geez.) As far as I know, Eric is trying to dabble in state government out in California these days.

4. Yet another summer, my roommate at MusiCamp told me that I looked just like a Swedish foreign exchange student that stayed with his family a couple of years ago. Maybe it was Norwegian, but it was definitely Scandinavian.

5. Since my college friends come from across Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc., I've heard about other doppelgangers from them. Unfortunately, I don't remember any notable stories, although there was a sighting in the Twin Cities a couple of days ago. As my friend put it, "Your name died on my lips when I realized you wouldn't have come to MN w/o telling anyone, but holy s*** this kid looked exactly like you." It could be the same guy as #1 on the list, but I wouldn't make that guarantee.

On one hand, there are only so many facial feature combinations so eventually, people who aren't related are going to look similar. On the other hand, my network of lookalikes apparently spans multiple countries. Countries! The inclusion of an r is not a typo in that previous word. Maybe it's the hair or the glasses, but it's just kind of surprising to think about. If you have any doppelganger stories (either for me of your own doppelgangers), feel free to send them my way!