They say everyone in the world has an exact double somewhere else in the world.
When I was living in Kingston, I would occasionally have people call out to me, or come up and start conversations with me, and address me as “Sandy”. When I would get over the initial confusion and gently inform them that I was not the person they thought I was, they would laugh and tell me to stop kidding. On one occasion I actually had to produce identification to prove I was not who they thought I was.
Friends were similarily confused when they saw this “Sandy” person out and about; I would receive phone calls asking when I had cut my hair, or why I hadn’t said hello. I would have to explain that it wasn’t me, it was my doppelganger.
I thought this was fairly strange. I mean, what are the odds that if you have a double, they’d live in the same small city as you? But a few days ago, a friend of mine saw a membership photo of a woman in her gym, and both she and her husband spent 5 confused minutes figuring out that no, no one had sneakily gotten a secret photo of her, this was actually someone else.
Who else has had this kind of confusion with their doppelganger?
It used to happen to me all the time. Once, when I was in high school, my dad came home and demanded to know why I hadn’t been in school that afternoon. He’d seen someone downtown who was such a dead-ringer for me, he was convinced I’d skipped class.
I don’t know, but she must be everywhere. Nearly every new person I meet says I seem familiar or remind them of someone. I must have the most uninteresting and generic face possible.
I had one back in college. She looked enough like me that even friends were confused, though I don’t think one ever got up in her face or anything. The only way we discovered I had one, rather than airheadedly not noticing when someone was waving hi from across the street or whatever, was figuring out that she’d been at spots I wasn’t at during that day. She even had a similar hairstyle and jacket, and rode a bicycle to class like I did, with a helmet on.
During my senior year, my sister - who people claimed looked like my twin - started attending the same college, and so we both had the doppelganger in addition to being able to be mistaken for each other. We referred to the mystery woman as “the evil triplet.” This woman even confused my sister’s boyfriend of the time, though as I noted before, it wasn’t a face-to-face confrontation.
Neither my sister nor I ever knowingly saw her. I wonder if we’d have recognized her as “the evil triplet” if we had?
I apparently had one in college, too, who casual acquaintences would get into conversations with and then tell me they’d saw me but I hadn’t recognized them.
I have had several over my lifetime. In another thread I told the story of how I was feted as a hero at the pub one night, but it turned out that everyone had heard that I was almost beaten to death by a bikie gang the night before. It wasn’t me.
A few years ago I had three incidents in about a month:
A woman ran up to chat with me while I was walking at lunchtime. We walked and talked for quite a while and then she said, “That guy you recommended worked out to be perfect for the job,” and I had to tell her that I wasn’t who she thought I was. She was horrified but I told her I had been enjoying our chat and had selfishly let it continue.
Not much later I walked out of the building at lunchtime and a guy about my age accosted me like an old friend. He insisted that we had played together in a band in a city in which I have never lived. For a few moments he seemed quite annoyed at my insistence that I had never seen him in my life.
Weeks later a similar event happened walking down the street. A woman believed I was her girlfriend’s ex. She too was annoyed by my denials for a while but at the time I was married and my wedding ring convinced her.
I seem to have many. I very often have people think that they know me. So often that I sometimes worry that I’ll be called into a police lineup and be “identified” when I have done nothing.
Two years ago I was in the hospital and a nurse mistook me for her cousin. And wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t (she thought I was joking) and even practically called my mother a liar when mom explained to her that she was mistaken.
A man I used to work with was sure he saw me at the local VFW and was miffed because I didn’t say hello.
I met mine in a church camp in the summer of 1960. We have similar first names. We ended up going to the same small college where we were frequently confused by people who just didn’t pay attention. Eventually we became sorority sisters.
When shown a group photo, my mother picked her out as me.
I went to school with one; she’d been there since year 7, I got there halfway through year 9 and one girl turned to another and said, “Don’t you think she looks like Nat?”
Other girl replied, “Oh, I thought that was Nat…”
A few months later, classmates returned from an UNYA conference claiming that I had a twin named Chloe.
Having moved to Sydney last year, I met someone at my new school who knows this same Chloe.
I must have a bunch of them, because people are always telling me they know somebody who looks like me. I’ve actually had people (complete strangers) come up to me in airports and tell me this.
I’ve never met any of the doppelgangers, so I can’t tell how much they resembled me.
The only person I’ve been said to resemble that I’ve seen a picture of is former Boston Globe editoriakl cartoonist Paul Szep. He has a slightly more Leno-iash chin, but otherwise, I can see the resemblance – same beetling brow, same nose, same hairline. Somebody once cut out one of those “Dewar’s Profile” ads that featured Szep, tore off the identifying name, and taped the thing to my office door in grad school. People came up to me and asked how I got a whiskey ad done about me. (I don’t even drink scotch or whiskey)
Not a great shot, but the only one I could find quickly:
When I was a teenager, there was a girl named Gabrielle who was about my age and lived a few towns over. I never met her, but we had several mutual friends. Occasionally I’d be in a store and someone would mistake me for her. Also, at a party on more than one occasion, someone would approach me and start talking, thinking I was Gabrielle.
I never got to meet her, but I saw pictures of her a few times, and they looked so much like me, I was a bit disturbed. According to friends of mine, Gabrielle felt the same way when she saw pictures of me. Sounds like a Parent Trap kind of situation, doesn’t it?
I’ve had complete strangers come up to me in the supermarket and tell me that I look soooo much like Jon Cryer – “Duckie,” in Pretty in Pink. I believe that I look nothing like him, but I’ve heard it at least four times now, so what do I know?
When I lived in FL, there was a guy who must’ve been my doppelganger(I’ve never heard of that word before, but since I figured out what it meant I just had to use it). I’d get mistaken for someone quite abit, so he must have lived close to where I did. Once, I walked into a gas station and the lady at the counter asked if I had forgotten something. I didn’t realize it right away, but my doppelganger (OK, I just had to use it twice) must have just left the store. If I had been quicker thinking, I may have been able to catch him. I’ve since moved and will probably never know who it was.
I have one. My sister and I went to see “Sweeney Todd” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival one year and she said that a girl in the cast looked exactly like me. I agreed. It was kind of strange to watch myself on the stage.
I met mine at a party about thirty yers ago. It was weird. I shook hands with the guy and hoped that he was not a criminal. I haven’t seen him since, and don’t even live in the same part of the state now, but I wonder if someday some cop will put the arm on me and say, “OK Lefty, your time is up!”
And I’m a righty. Did I mention this guy was like a mirror image?
