My Twin
Do you Have a Look Alike?
“Whatever the real truth behind doppelgangers, belief in the spirit double has instilled both fear and wonder in people for thousands of years.”
A doppelganger is someone who looks like someone else.
My three-year-old neighbour thinks I look just like Stella from the book seires by Marie-Louis Gay. What do you think?
Spirit twin? Long lost relative? Complete coincidence?
Whatever it is, I also have a real-live look-alike twin.
Photographer Francois Brunelle undertook an interesting project: hunting for look-alikes or ‘doppelgangers’ and setting out to shoot 200 pictures of couples who, despite not sharing the same blood, have strikingly similar faces. Check it out here.
I’m lucky that I didn’t have to search far and wide for my twin, as she lives in the same town, and she happens to be a good friend of mine!
Meet Heather.
I first met Heather through the school. Our sons are approximately the same age, and we have many mutual friends.
To make things more confusing, Heather and I have the same last name. However, hers is through marriage. It turns out that Heather’s husband is actually my 6th cousin.
I am related to him, and not to her, and yet we are the ones who look alike!
I don’t think we noticed the similarity right away, that is until strange things started to happen!
The first incident I remember, was when picking our kids up at a birthday party, my son ran to Heather instead of me!
Other funny things have happened to us, too.
One time, Heather was shopping down town. My husband’s colleague came up to her and began talking to her – launching into a big conversation. Heather stood there with a confused look on her face, until a mutual friend had to explain, “that’s not Laura!”.
It happens to me, too. When I walk through the school hallway, kids say to me, “Hi A’s mom!” I went to change my son’s medical records at the school and they said, “for A, right?”
“No! Wrong child! It’s Thomas!” I quickly had to correct before Heather’s son had the wrong allergies recorded!
“I saw on Facebook you went canoeing this summer!” No, that was Heather’s picture!
“You run the Valley Family Fun website!” No, that’s Laura.
We’ve gotten quite used to just answering… “oh, that’s Laura/Heather”. Or smiling and waving at everyone who thinks they know us.
It’s funny that when I finished writing the draft of this blog post I went to a school track meet. Twice in a span of 5 minutes: “Hi A’s Mom!” and “How will S do in his run today?” I had to remind her that I was Laura and my son was Daniel. Not S.
We haven’t quite worked out how we can use this to our advantage… yet! It’s just good to know I have a stunt double available!
As for who is the evil twin… we’ll let you decide!
