Likeness

So this one day I’m watching Hercules – that t.v. show with Kevin Sorbo or Sorba or maybe that’s not his name at all.  *We watched a lot of silly things in college.*  I’m watching this show, which I believe was filmed in New Zealand, and I’m studying at the same time, and then suddenly my roommates are screeching at me to look up!  Look up!

 

And there I am, an extra in the background of this cheesy show filmed halfway around the world from where I live.  There is my flat brown hair, my slight slope to the shoulders, a posture that makes me look tired even when I’m not.  The arch of the eyebrows, the movement of the body in space, even this funny weird head tilting thing I do when I talk sometimes – it was a perfect match.  We all watched openmouthed, and then rewound and watched again (this was pre-Tivo, so I think it was on a VHS tape.)  (Yes, we taped it.)  It is more feasible to me that future me found a time machine and traveled back to the past when this episode was filmed and landed a role as an extra, than it is that somewhere in New Zealand is a person who is me with a much cooler accent.

 

I’m reading this book called Likeness, because the airport had slim pickings and a mystery story, even a poorly written one, can usually hold my interest and make cramming into coach for hours a little more bearable.  (FYI, this one is actually v. good – Tana French, maybe, is the author?  I’m not well-researched today.)  It’s about a similar, much creepier instance of doppelgangers meeting (in this story, one of them is dead), but it reminded me of my own run-in with my double.  I wonder where she is?  I wonder if her name is Abby, and is that why everyone that meets me thinks I look like an Abby?  I wonder how it is possible that we are so alike that even I was doubting whether or not perhaps I’d been drugged and smuggled to New Zealand and forced to put on a flowing medieval dress thing and act for ten minutes and then given a memory erasing serum and then flown back and deposited in my bed and then fed fakes memories so I’d never miss the days I was gone? 

 

These are the things that occupy the mind of us folks back in coach.  First class was just thinking – red or white?  Shall I recline and snooze now, or have another complimentary beverage?

 

So, that’s my story.  This was a lot more interesting in my head.