Have you ever experienced the shock of seeing yourself in a photo or a video, and you know it can’t possibly be you. And yet, it IS you. Your face, your smile, your hair, your complexion, your mannerisms–you.
It’s a peculiar feeling.
doppelganger: a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person
In 1983, Lionel Richie made a video entitled All Night Long. I was teaching at the state school for the blind in Talladega at the time. One weekend, I stayed up to watch TBS‘s Night Tracks, the closest thing to MTV to which I had access in those days. And I saw Richie’s video. Something–or should I say someone–caught my eye in the vid: a backup dancer with short blonde hair. She looked oddly familiar.
She looked like—me. Hell, she looked more like me than I did!
Now, I don’t have an identical twin. But I do apparently have a doppelganger of sorts.
She popped up in several moments on the video, beginning with the opening scene: a shot from behind of a girl carrying a lunch box, dressed in denim shorts and a plaid shirt, walking to the right of the screen amongst the other dancers.
At 47 seconds, she reappears dancing a person or two behind Lionel, wearing an orange T-shirt, denim mini and a scarf around her neck.
At 1:08, there she is sporting jeans and a blue shirt and yet another scarf (the chick likes scarves, and–so do I). And again, same outfit, at 1:33.
A couple of very quick flashes of her and then she reappears by the steps looking up at the policeman at 2:54.
At 3:08 there she is to Richie’s left, wearing a sky blue mini and–you guessed it!–a scarf and a brown low-slung belt, pirouetting gracefully and smiling. Looks like she is having fun. You get quite a bit of my doppelganger over the next 12 seconds.
Now, I can only wish I had Doppelganger‘s dancing skills–and my legs and hips were never that slender, alas.
Still, she looks amazingly like me at that age (early 20s). Amazingly. It’s kind of–spooky.
My husband-to-be, with whom I had split during our college days, was out in California at the time undergoing AF officer training. Later, when we reunited, Benny mentioned to me seeing a certain music video that had really caught his attention. “I kept watching and scratching my head and wondering, ‘Hey, did Angie go out to California and become a–dancer??'”
Well, no, I didn’t. But there is someone out there who once looked more like me than my own flesh-and-blood relatives. I wonder what happened to Doppelganger, whether she continued in show business, if she has a famly, what she looks like now.
Little did she know she had a long-lost twin in Alabama all those years ago.
the armitage effect 
That’s so fun! It must have given you a weird feeling seeing someone so like you and yet NOT you! Apparently I have – or had – one, although I haven’t seen her! There was a large department store where we shopped many years ago and I lost count of the times the cashier’s (or whatever they call them these days) would look at me when I went to pay for my purchases as say, “Staff?” When I would reply that I wasn’t they would say I looked exactly like someone who worked upstairs in the women’s department. I often looked around but could never see anyone that I could have been mistaken for but obviously more than one person saw the likeness! 🙂
I’ve had people confuse me with someone else they knew that supposedly looked like me, but when I met my “twin” I really didn’t think we looked much alike, maybe superficially. I guess they saw something I didn’t. 😉
But this girl in the video is so eerily like me as I was in those days–I wore my hair in very much the same way at one time and the color is the same, which is certainly part of the resemblance. But having seen photos and video of myself, her nose, her chin, her smile, the shape of her face, skin tone, the way she tilts her head, the way her eyes look when downcast (can’t tell about the color)–it’s extraordinary. My own sisters don’t look that much like me! LOL
That must have made it even more extraordinary for you! Imagine meeting one’s doppelganger face to face! That would be a really strange experience I think.
Seriously, like something out of a movie. There have been cases of identical twins separated as babies who only discover they have a twin later in life. Imagine what it’s like when they do meet–to meet your mirror image!
In my case it would be scary! LOL!!
LOL Well, I certainly don’t look much like that anymore, but it WAS almost 30 years ago. 😉
Freaky, but good freaky. I, too, would be wondering about her. I was once told I had a doppelganger, but I think it was simply the observer’s imagination. We really looked nothing alike, aside from (at that time) pale skin and honey-blond hair.
Yeah, sometimes people seem to see a resemblance we don’t or can’t. 😉
:)Petite blond- my brothers would be delighted. 😉
Not petite anymore, but back in the day . . . 😉
Funny that you wrote about this yesterday when I was pondering my intuition that there aren’t enough faces in the world for everyone to have a fully unique one 🙂
I know, LOL. I am not even sure why it popped into my head again. I decided to go back and watch it to see if it still had the same effect on me–and it did. Guess it proves your intuition to be true. 😉
I don’t have a doppelganger, but I once freaked out an old colleague of my mum’s with my apparent likeness to my mum.I was walking down the corridor of her office and this guy was walking towards me and then he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks…He said “oh my God I thought you were Emilia, 20 years ago! It was like a blast from the past!” I could never see the likeness myself but people at her workplace used to tell me that I was the spitting image of her. I wish!!! She was absolutely gorgeous, I’m average at best. 🙂
I remember those photos of your mom you posted before. She was lovely, indeed. 😀 Sometimes it’s the way that we move, gesture, sound as well as specific physical features, that can remind us of one another. People used to confuse my mom’s voice on the telephone with mine. She always sounded younger than she was, so even though she was 35 years my senior, our voices could be quite similar. There are times when I say something or make a certain facial expression and I think I must look/sound exactly like my middle sister (and we definitely resemble, just not in the same freakish way as Doppelganger and I do. 😉