Some trivia for you – In German, doppleganger means double walker. They are supposed to be the evil or less interesting double of every person.
But you could have found that out on Wikipedia like I just did. So what’s the real truth about these people who look so similar to people we know? Why do we, more often than you’d expect, get glimpses of them as they pass us on the street? When my friend told me they’d taken a picture of my double I was of course curious.
But curiosity turned to offense when the girl in the picture turned out to be nothing at all like me.
Sure she had curly brown hair, a jean jacket, and a blackberry just like I do, but her eyes were too close together, her nose too crooked, and her posture just dreadful. I’m guessing that my friend had just taken the pic and thought nothing more, never considering that I’d read so much into it. But I began to wonder if this was how everyone saw me.
Then I started to wonder if that girl would be offended to be compared to me. So I investigated. I got out my camera and hit the streets to meet as many dopplegangers as I could on a Sunday afternoon. I found a man who looked eerily like someone I knew at a grocery store and struck up a conversation.
He was busy getting his week’s worth of food, but did tell me when I remarked that he reminded me of someone, that he got that a lot. When I asked if he minded, he said he hadn’t thought that much of it and pushed his cart to the meat section. Other dopplegangers said much the same thing. However there was one in particular that caught my attention when they answered back to my ‘you look like someone’ with ‘they probably look like me.’
I walked home, camera in hand and a new idea in my head. So what if I have a double or maybe even many doubles that if people I know were to see would think omg its Annelise. They are all completely separate from me, they have nothing to do with me or anywhere I’m going. The truth about dopplegangers is that they’re there, they do exist, and it just doesn’t matter.
