Double Takes

They say we all have a twin in this world. I have to say I believe that.

I’ve never bought into the fact that no two snowflakes are alike. The jury in my mind is still out on fingerprints. Everyone has 10 fingers and you mean to tell me that all how many billions of people with 10 fingers each there are no duplications in the ridge pattern? How did we come to buy into this notion? You ever see fingerprints? They have to have 8 to 10 points of similarity to be considered a match. Hello? Only 8 to 10 points out of 100 ridges? How is this scientific? But I digress. I was talking about twins.

As far as my sick mind works, there are a limited number of combinations that a face can be made from. How many eye shapes are there really? Even being generous, fifty maybe? Same with noses. There is still a finite amount of ways they can be put together. When you think of the millions of people in the world, it’s no wonder that there are a bunch of us that look alike.

Traveling from city to city, from business to business, maybe this hits me more than some people. For example, today I was working in a warehouse in Buffalo. At this warehouse, there are three people that make me do a double take every time I see them.

One guy is a spitting image of Joe Namath. Granted, a younger version of Joe, but still, this guy could be Joe when Joe was in his 30s. Another guy here looks exactly like Ozzy Osbourne, complete with the long hair! And yet another is the spitting image of my cousin Nick. He looks so much like him, or at least so much like the last time I saw him, that I had to do a triple take and almost asked him what the heck he was doing in Buffalo pushing a pallet jack.

It gets creepy sometimes. I’ve seen my sister Cathie, my sister Barb, my Mom, various famous people from the tabloid world like Eddie Van Halen, Johnny Carson, Jimmy Stewart, Mark Grace (former 1st baseman for the Cubs) and Eddie Murphy just to name a few. Ok, not the originals, but great duplicates!

For most people, it’s fun to look twice to see is that really Ozzy? Or Joe? Or Eddie? Given the circumstances that I see most of these people in, it’s easy to realize that it’s not the celebrity version.

But when I’m sitting in a restaurant for example, and I see my Mom, that kind of takes my breath away.

I’ll know when the day comes that I go completely off the edge. That will be when I run up to a perfect stranger and start hugging them and talking to them like I’ve known them all of my life. I think that day isn’t too far off.