kartooner

In the past 10 or 12 years ran­dom strangers have men­tioned to me in pass­ing con­ver­sa­tion, “You remind me of my boss or my friend who lives in such and such town, down by the river.” The first few times this hap­pened, whether it be at a local Block­buster or in a super­mar­ket aisle, I would sim­ply shrug it off as mere coin­ci­dence. How­ever, after sev­eral encoun­ters with peo­ple men­tion­ing that I look like some­one they know I’ve come to real­ize that I’m either a clone of sev­eral peo­ple or they are clones of me.

Just the other day a co-worker shared with me that I looked strik­ingly sim­il­iar to her pre­vi­ous boss and then she added, “That’s a good thing.” What could I do but smile and breath a sigh of relief that even though I some­how resem­ble her ex-boss, fear not, for it’s a “good thing”. A few years ago, after return­ing a late rental to Block­buster, the guy behind the counter stops me from walk­ing out the door say­ing, “Hey man, long time no see. Did you ever rent that movie? What was it called? The Game? Yeah man, The Game.”

Like­wise, a sim­il­iar sit­u­a­tion occurred when I was using the esca­la­tor at Barnes & Nobles. As I was mak­ing my way up to the non-fiction aisle a guy behind me pokes me in the side and says, “Dude, did you ever get your muf­fler replaced?”. I turned around and he smiled and said “Oh wow, you look just like my brother’s friend. Sorry dude, I thought you were some­one else. My bad.”

Whether I’m shuf­fling through my lug­gage at the air­port or buy­ing an ice cream cone at Baskin & Rob­bins this “You remind me of..” occurence hap­pens about 70–80% of the time and it’s at no fault to the stranger or casual aquain­tance. After­all, I’m a clone of sev­eral peo­ple or they are clones of me.