Meeting Your Doppleganger

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We’ve all heard the legend, that there is someone else out there who is your supernatural identical twin and to meet them is ‘A Very Bad Thing’. Well a couple of years ago I had an encounter with a doubleganger at one remove and with a twist.

The day started mundanely enough with no hint of the mind-bending horror that was about to unfold. Looking to price car insurance I entered a local insurance office, the girl behind the counter was friendly and helpful enough but kept giving me odd looks, finally with the transaction almost complete she smiled and told me to tell my sister that she was asking for her.

The problem of course is that I don’t have a sister and told her so, she looked genuinely surprised and asked if I knew someone called ‘Jane Smith’ (can’t recall the actual name), I said I didn’t and she sat back and said, “That’s amazing, she looks just like you, she used to work here”

Now, I’m an average guy and while I’m no Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like I’ve never been described as effeminate either, I laughed saying that I felt sorry for her if she looked anything like me, the assistant smiled and said that no, she was really very pretty. She then called another girl over from another desk and asked her who I looked like, I could see the glimmer of recognition but she wasn’t sure until the first girl told her and she looked shocked, “Oh wow, he really does!”

At this point I was beginning to be a bit weirded out, the first girl was obviously distracted and kept glancing up at me as she worked on her computer, I could see the second girl talking to other people in the background and pointing at me with the others having varying expressions of recognition and surprise. Uncomfortable with this unexpected turn of events I wrapped the transaction up, thanked the assistant and went to leave but without escaping the parting shot, “You know she really does look like you, she talks like you, she even moves like you…”

I left in a hurry but ever since I’ve wondered if I shouldn’t have taken more note of her name and tried to see if we could meet up to see if the resemblance was quite as uncanny as everyone said.

It was like the start to some modern magic-realism or sci-fi novel.

Who was she? My long-lost sister? My female alternate from another dimension? A distant time-traveling descendant returned from the future to warn of an impending apocalyptic war? My evil twin (or I’m the evil twin!). Or just someone who due to a quirk of genetics and upbringing looks and acts a lot like myself?

What would it be like if we met each other, would we like each other? Even fall in love? Or would it be hate at first sight and involve a bloody fight to the death or an epic dimension-spanning battle involving all of time, space and reality?

I kind of hope it’d be the latter, I’ve always wanted to be involved in an epic dimension-spanning battle involving all of time, space and reality… :wink:

2

I met mine at a rock club in Brooklyn – would’ve been around 89’-90’ or so. I was standing at the bar, when I saw a girl looking at me with her jaw on the floor. My first thought was “Hey, score…”, but then she reached into the crowd and pulled over my exact double. We were even dressed almost exactly the same. Freaky as hell.

Man, he was a fricking asshole.

3

For me it was in Deep Ellum, which is basically the hipster part of downtown Dallas. I was driving down the road with a few of my friends and we were looking in the windows of all of the shops and we pulled up to a stop light when I saw her. She was my exact duplicate and she was even wearing clothes that I owned (though I was not wearing that same outfit at the time I did have it at home in my closet) and she was standing in a tattoo parlor. Apparently my twin is a bit more bad-ass than I am because I could never get a tattoo. I sat looking in that window for a minute trying to figure out if it was a mirror or something when someone in the back seat of my car said, “Whoa, that chick looks just like you!” The light turned green and I drove off but I have always secretly wondered about her and wanted to go back and find her again.

4

I entered Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas the year after Buddy Holly was killed; quite a few people asked if I intended to stay in the music industry----it took a while, but finally someone told me I could be the twin of the drummer in Buddy Holly’s band. I never met the guy but once the subject came up, I looked at a lot of pictures. There may have been a faint resemblance but
had we been standing side by side, there would have been no confusion as to who was who.

5

I almost met her once, missed her by this much. I walked in somewhere right after her departure, the employees thought I was her, with the amazing ability to change clothes, change hair style and such very quickly.

My entire life, no matter where I have lived, I have been mistaken for other people. I have yet to ever see anyone that looks remotely like me though, and have often wondered if my doppleganger is a stealthy stalker. It would explain some strings of bad luck. Creepy.

6

I’ve never met mine but I have seen his picture. He’s a tarpon guide in Costa Rica and was used by the best man in my wedding while on a fishing trip. While he’s a little rougher looking, from an obviously harder life, the resemblance is uncanny and freaked both my friend out when he met him and me when he sent me his picture.

7

I once met a guy who looked exactly like me, but he looked exactly like I had looked ten years younger. It was very disconcerting. He had the same hair, glasses, etc., that I’d had ten years or so before that time.

I’d had other cases of mistaken identity, previous, such as being challenged to a fight by my “ex-girlfriend’s” new boyfriend, who was fairly nice to me once he realized I really wasn’t “Jimmy” and had in fact never met his girlfriend before that night. I later saw a picture of Jimmy and didn’t think that there was that much of a resemblance.

Stuff like that makes you realize how unique you’re not, and also understand why sometimes complete strangers treat you strangely.

8

I have an identical twin so I never thought I’d have a doppleganger, but one time some girls came running up to me calling me by MY name. I knew that I’d never met them before so I didn’t reply (this was many, many years ago, but even now I can be that cold) but they came right up to me and insisted I was this girl Karen. I am this girl Karen, but I’m not THAT girl Karen.

9

When I was 16 and visiting relatives in another state, I went to a local produce festival with my cousins. People kept coming up to me, congratulating me, and then saying, “Oh…wait…you’re not Sharon*!”

It turned out that Sharon had just been elected festival queen. I was very insecure at the time about my appearance, and found it really helpful to know that somebody who looked just like me had been elected queen of something, anything. My cousins agreed that I looked just like Sharon, although they had to have it pointed out to them.

So finally, late in the day, I met Sharon. I thought she was very pretty, but had kind of a corny hairstyle and didn’t look much like me at all, or I didn’t look like her. But the picture of her that was in the paper the next day could have been me. Very odd.

But I am often told I look just like somebody, or asked if I have a sister. I think I must have a generic bone structure.

*May or may not be her real name, I can’t remember.

10

I went to a very large university (around 50,000 students), and had a doppleganger there who I never met, but who a number of my friends saw around the campus. I gather the resemblance was striking, and we even both bicycled, wore a bike helmet when doing so, had hair in a ponytail, and wore a jean jacket in non-winter months. I began to call her the “Evil Twin”.

Then my sister, who a lot of people thought looked like she could be my twin, enrolled at the same place a couple years later. So obviously the doppleganger became the “Evil Triplet”. My sister didn’t bicycle around campus so sightings could be distinguished that way, but not everyone knew that - a boyfriend of my sis was peeved at her once because “she” didn’t respond when he yelled her name, and Sis figured out it was the Evil Triplet.

I wonder if this woman ever noticed that people were double-taking at her or yelling these two women’s names at her in passing.

11

I apparently am the twin of a nurse who works in Akron, Ohio. I have been approached in public at least a dozen times and asked if I am a nurse. At least she seems to be a good nurse, because these people have fond memories of her caring for them or their loved ones. She didn’t smother them with pillows or put cyanide in their IV tubes or anything.

12

Apparently Susan in Hackensack looks exactly like me. I’ve never met her.

My Boss kept getting mistaken for Jade, who drove the idential car that she had at the time. After a couple of months of this, she saw the car parked, so she stopped and waited for the owner to appear. The owner saw her and said “You must be Jo, you do look like me.” A good friendship came out of it.

13

My husband’s doppleganger goes to the same week long festival we do every year. It’s, as many people have said already, uncanny. He looks and even moves like my husband. For a number of years, it wasn’t too bad, because he had short hair and my husband long, but now my husband’s got the same haircut! Oddly, he’s never met or seen his doppleganger, but nearly nightly I almost run up to hug the wrong guy. It’s made me a little more reserved at the bonfire.

I really should just go introduce myself to the guy and become friends, so I could go hug him without freaking him out, but I’ve spent the last three years staring at him in disbelief, so it feels all awkward now. Besides, what do you say?

“Hi, you look just like my husband!”
“Oh, er…thanks?”
“No really, you do!”
“Um…”
“I mean, I’m not hitting on you or anything, it’s just that you look exactly like the guy I have sex with!”
“Er…”

I just can’t see it going well.

14

Here’s mine. I was surfing the web, looking at naughty pictures, I believe. I found a picture, and my heart stopped.

The woman in the picture looked just like me. Same hair, face, expression, boobs–and even the same tummy. (I hate my tummy, but that may not be relevant.) It’s a tummy that’s not made-for-porn, let’s say.

I freaked for a moment. Who’d taken the picture? But in a few minutes, looking again, I didn’t recognise the man who was keeping her occupied, nor the surroundings. It wasn’t me.

But damn–for a little while, it fooled even me. Those were a harrowing few moments!

My doppleganger does porn.

15

So does that make you the evil twin? :wink:

16

[Myra]

I can only repeat what was said to me:

I was in the grocery store and a woman said, “Eva!” I assumed she was talking to someone behind me and ignored her. She walked straight up to me and grabbed me. “Eva!.. oh… you’re not Eva?”

She told me I looked just like a woman she knew and mentioned in passing that she worked at the hospital.

That was interesting enough, but about a week later, a woman I worked with said, “I saw you in church Sunday, but I didn’t get a chance to say hi.”

Church? Me? Not. She said the woman looked just like me and was wearing a white uniform.

So she got mistaken for me and I got mistaken for her. Never did get to meet her.

[/myra]

17

Two stories:

  1. I was on a crowded subway during rush hour, and I looked to the other side of the car and saw a mirror. It must have been a mirror, because I looked at it and thought “how odd”, and my mirror image had a “how odd” expression on its face. Then I realized that there are no mirrors on the subway.

  2. My mother was shocked – SHOCKED, I tells ya – to see my picture on the cover of the Sunday paper. At a petting zoo. With my daughter. She was really confused that not only was I in town without contacting her, but also I had somehow managed to aquire offspring. She cut out the picture and sent it to me. I had it up on my fridge for years.

18

As far as I can recall, I’ve never been mistaken for anybody else (except over the phone), and I’ve never met anybody I thought resembled me except my relatives.

Clearly my evil twin is a stealthy bastard.

19

Ayup.

20

When I was in late middle school/first two years of high school (after the movie Dirty Dancing was released), I was sometimes mistaken for Jennifer Grey. Then, of course, she had plastic surgery. So I now sometimes get comments like, “Hey, you look like Jennifer Grey! You know, before the plastic surgery.” Fantastic - it’s bad enough that I have this wub on my chin that I couldn’t get rid of even when I was anorexic. Now I look like a before picture. Dammit, I just can’t win. :rolleyes: