doppelganger.

I always thought I was unusual looking. Or at least, I liked thinking that there was no one else out there that looked exactly like me. But lately a lot of people are confusing me with someone else. The most disturbing incident happened a few weeks ago at Shannon's book release party. You know those people that look at you a little too long and then look away as soon as you make eye contact? If it's a guy doing the looking I like to think that he's so taken with my beauty he can't peel his eyes off me, but then when I look his way he's too intimated by my startling good looks to come over and introduce himself. Don't tell me you don't think the same thing. No really, I don't want to know. Anyway, this particular night it was a girl who was looking at me like that. She didn't look away when I made eye contact and smiled at her, she walked over and looked at me hard. I said "hi" a little freaked out that she came closer just to get a better look, as if I had some growth on my face I wasn't aware of or some other deformity I had failed to notice. Then she seemed to snap out of what ever reverie she had been in, "I'm so sorry", she seemed a little uncomfortable all of a sudden, "but you look exactly like my childhood babysitter." When I asked where she was from and she told me Michigan, I assured her there was no way it was possible. She seemed a little disappointed and again commented on the striking similarities. What I really wanted to ask was what you never have the nerve to ask in those situations, "Was she pretty, really unfortunate looking, or just average?" I was also wondering if I looked old that night, because I couldn't have been more than a few years older than this girl. I mean I usually get carded for a drink, so it sort of freaked me out that I was being mistaken for a 26 year olds child babysitter. Really I would have asked her to e-mail me a photo if I didn't feel like I had let her down by not being who she thought I was. How much does it suck that when a stranger tells you you look just like someone else they know you rarely get to see that someone else to compare notes? I mean, I want to see me in three dimensions and a doppelganger seems the most probable way for that to happen. Or a wax sculpture, but I doubt that's happening anytime soon.
Maybe I wouldn't have been as freaked out if the same thing hadn't happened to me two days earlier. I was at one of my craft fairs, sitting there, minding my business when this pretty decent looking boy came up to my table. He kept glancing up at me and not really looking at the things on my table. Then he finally made steady eye contact and asked, "Haven't we met before?" The longer he looked at me the more convinced he seemed to be that we had indeed spent time together before. And when I say time, I mean had sex. I looked at him and really tried to place him, half the time I want these things to work, I want to be able to look at the person and recognize something and then be pulled back to a memory with them in it. But as I looked at him I got nothing. "Sorry, I don't think I know you." He sort of smirked, almost winked at me and continued to look at my stuff. It was as if he didn't believe me and I got the awkward feeling he thought we had slept together or something. I started to actually question if I had met him drunkenly at a party and gone home with him. But even when I'm wasted I don't black out and really there wasn't a hint of recognition in his face for me. As he walked away he looked at me again, as if he knew some secret but wasn't going to say it out loud, he took my card and smiled. Again, I felt sort of bad that I wasn't who he thought I was. But why does this keep happening? I swear I have about 5 stories like this just from the past six months. If there are so many people that look hanutingly like me, I've got to run into one of them soon, right? I'm not sure if I would love that or hate it. Maybe it would result in some ninja like fight, where we would agree that only one of us can walk this earth and so we fight each other to the death. Or maybe we'll just walk by each other and barely notice.