The Doppelganger

Occasionally, I get mistaken for this blonde girl who waits tables in town. She's about twenty lbs smaller and dresses better, so, I take it as a huge compliment. She's actually waited on me before, and I wonder if she knows that people tell me I look like her all the time, and what she thinks of this. And just the other day, I was at Pizza Villa, and I saw a Bradley Cooper doppelganger. If you knew anything about the clientele at Pizza Villa, you'd understand that this is really weird. Between this encounter at the Villa, celebrity doppelganger week, and the recurring doppelganger references on How I Met Your Mother, I decided to write about it.

A couple of years ago, I had a doppelganger in Portland. It started out with a mistaken identy at Shay's, in Monument Square. I was going there occasionally that summer- they had $5 bourbon lemonades served in mason jars, but the people watching was priceless. The bartender asked me if I wanted a Jim and Coke, which was weird, because although not opposed to the idea, I'd never ordered that before. I don't really name drop alcohol. Weeks later at Rosie's, where I'd consider myself something of a regular, once, the waitress asked me if I wanted a Sam Adams, which I'd also never ordered there. I kind of looked at her funny and said no, but thank you, and ordered a Hooker Brown. (Not until recently did I occur to me that the beer is called HOOKER and that's weird.) Then, when she came back for my food order, she asked if I wanted the buffalo wings with blue cheese sauce. Hold on. No way. Blue Cheese sauce is WICKED GROSS. Sam Adams, honest mistake, but there's no way I'd EVER eat blue cheese sauce. And it's not the sort of thing that someone just suggests off the menu, this was obviously a case of mistaken identity. Confirmed one morning about a week later at the office when Michelle came into work and said, "I saw Amanda's doppelganger on Wharf Street last night. She had the same purple tights and everything. I had to look long and hard before I realized it wasn't her." I looked at her really confused, and remembering NO! I wasn't in the Old Port that night. Holy shit, I have a Portland doppelganger. Really, hopefully, we never meet. What if we have to fight to the death?

This was not the case with my friend Betsy, especially because in a fight to the death, she'd probably win. She worked at a bank in Westbrook for a while, and I went in frequently for my job. Much later, we become friends, and she told me this story.

I poke fun, but Westbrook isn't that bad. I imagine that regulars at the coffeeshop there are the same regulars as at the bakery and the grocery store and the bank. I worked in Westbrook for three years, and despite the commute, the occasional encounters with crazy Westbrook people (remember that guy who showed me his colostomy bag?), and limited lunch options, I liked it. Betsy was a teller, and every so often someone would come through her line and say that they saw her at Hannaford, and that she didn't say hello back. She's really friendly, this sounds like a very uncharacteristic thing for her to do. And she realizes that no, she wasn't at Hannaford at the time you specified. Occasionally, someone calls her Megan, with absolute confidence. She's thinking, no, you're not even close, and I have a nametag. These numbers weren't adding up. One guy finally says, "You know, there's a girl named Megan who works at Hannaford who looks just like you." Betsy's like, whoa, well, I have to see this girl. Personally, I'd be terrified. So, she boldly walks into Hannaford for a bottle of seltzer, or whatever, on her way home that night, and asks the cashier if there is a girl named Megan working there who looks like her. Again, I'd be terrified. The cashier pages Megan, she comes to the front, and she asks Megan if she ever gets called Betsy. Megan says, yeah! with a 'how did you know' sort of tone in her voice. Betsy responds, well, I'm Betsy. As if this wasn't weird enough, there is one extremely distinguishing difference between the two: Megan is unmistakably cross-eyed.

Oh, and Darcy made this for me: