Do I Know You?

When I meet someone for the first time and they start to give me that look, I know juuust what they’re going to say. “You look so familiar. Have we met before?”

I’ll nod my head and say, “I get that a lot.” And I do get that a lot. A lot. Or people I do know will ask me something like, “I went to the pick-your-own strawberry patch, and the woman who owns it looks Just. Like. You! I thought it was you. You need to go down there and go see her. It’s you!”

The only explanation I can come up with for this phenomenon is I’m not overly pretty, not overly ugly, and have that middle-of-the-road Girl-Next-Door look. Either that or I have more than my fair share of doppelgangers out there who are also being asked by strangers if they’d met before. 

This weird perception people have of me is something I could use to my advantage if I wanted to go all “breaking bad.” The Law & Order police lineup would be a breeze! The witnesses would scratch their heads, squint, and say, “Gee. I just don’t know. It might be her; she kinda looks familiar. I think I know her. I don’t know.” Game. Set. Match.

Spoiler alert: I have epilepsy, and let me tell you a seizure is quite mind-altering. A strange, strange place to be. Legally tripping in a room with no doors, no windows, but oddly serene. One of the after effects is knowing in complete certainty that everyone you see is someone you’ve met before. Everyone. I was sitting in a hospital bed after a having a seizure when a doctor I’d never met walked in with his gaggle of medical students.  How reassuring that although we’d never met I recognized each and every one of them! So cool. It was like a homecoming! 

There’s an online group of people who have had seizures, like seizures, want more seizures, and share ideas with one another on how to bring on these longed-for seizures. The mind is a terrible thing to waste. And to seize.

The first time we met our friends Bonnie and Per, I said, “I’ve met one other person named Per.” He said it was a common Scandinavian name. Ok. Well, now I’ve met two Scandinavians.

After Bonnie and Per had been visiting for a few months or so, my husband announced he was retiring and we’d be leaving the church where he was a pastor. Bonnie asked, “Are you going to move to Florida, or somewhere?” No, we assured her. We have a house in Hendersonville. “Oh! We used to live there. Where did you live?” We told her the subdivision. “We lived there too. What street?” We told her the street. “We lived on that street!”

And immediately something like scales fell from our eyes . . . (Ok, you Bible readers. What chapter and verse is this alluding to?)

We had been across-the-street neighbors for a year or so about 20 years ago, and none of us recognized each other or remembered until right then. Bonnie and I had spent some time together including having conversations in the street about kids, husbands, etc.

This Per is the other Per I’d met. Ok, I’m back down to knowing just one Scandinavian.

The Baptist pastor and my husband both moved to town around the same time and favored each other a bit: about the same age, body size, had beards, wore glasses, and were bald. One day my husband and I got on an elevator after visiting someone in the hospital and said hi to the couple inside. The man looked a little sheepish, looked down at the floor, and finally said, “Pastor. I’m so sorry I haven’t been in church lately. I’ve just really been so busy, but I know that’s not an excuse.” I looked closely at the repentant guy and thought, man you really must be missing a ton of Sundays. I don’t recognize you at all. Or your wife.

She suddenly jabbed him in the side and hissed, “That’s not our pastor. That’s the Methodist preacher.” I’m sorry. I burst out laughing. Oh my gosh. How hilarious. He really hadn’t been to church–anyone’s church–in awhile. Poor guy.

As the youngest of four, I have the least number of pictures taken of any of my siblings. Very few pictures until the photographer showed up at kindergarten and my folks had to buy the school photos.

My oldest brother had a professional photographer, you read that right, PROFESSIONAL, photographer at his birthday party. By the time I came along, the novelty of having children in the house had worn off, and my parents were tired.

Erma Bombeck (ok Boomer) joked that she had pictures of her first born every 20 minutes of his life and pictures of her last born’s birth and high school graduation on the same roll of film. Loved her.

Imagine my happiness when my mom found a picture of my grandmother holding me as a baby proving my parents had loved me after all because they had taken pictures of me.

I turned the photo over looking for the date. Written on the back was “Luke?” “Cathy?” Was it my cousin? Was it me? Who knows? But at least the baby did look familiar to someone.