Can You Hear Me Now

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Samuel Butler

Doppelgänger: The ghostly counterpart of a living person. From the German words doppel, meaning double, and ganger, meaning goer.

I saw him only one time and that was 48 years ago. He was tall with really long, unkept, brown hair. He had a teenage mustache, an Arizona tan, looked about 18, and was as skinny as a rail. In other words, he looked a lot like me. As a matter of fact, he looked exactly like me. I was sitting in my seat at the United Artists Six Movie Theater in Scottsdale, Arizona eight rows away from myself. I don’t know if he saw me, but for several minutes I sat there staring at my double. He was standing with a group of friends as they laughed and clowned around. To say it was unnerving would be an understatement. Although I saw myself in the mirror every day, this was like looking into a mirror and seeing me move around while I knew I was standing perfectly still.

Over the years I’ve often thought about that day. I wonder if he only looked like me under certain circumstances and if I saw him outside under the bright Arizona sunlight any resemblance would be gone. I also wonder what he looks like today. Would I still do a double take if we ran into each other again? Would he do the same or was this awareness and perception one-sided?

Blood Lines

Most men who reach middle age will one day look into the mirror and say to themselves, “I have become my father.” Rarely is that said in a positive way. In a culture where youth is king, nobody wants to admit to growing older. Although I am getting better, I can easily fall into the I-will-stay-young-forever trap.

Besides the sobering look at your own mortality, is growing older such a bad thing? It’s far better than dying. Each new generation becomes part of a link that extends back to when our ancestor primates first stood erect. Our faces and bodies are simply the glue that binds families together and reminds us that we are more than a shared name. Looking like my father should be taken as a sign that my lineage has been successful. I come from poor peasant stock and the chances of the Prokop and Harzinski clans being wiped out by disease, starvation, and war were high.

As a parent, I often see my children as little mirrors. However, those mirrors aren’t necessarily mirrors that strictly reflect physical form. While there is a family resemblance, we are all unique in our appearances. Instead, when I look into those little mirrors it’s mostly bits and pieces of my personality staring back at me. Sometimes I like what I see. Sometimes I do not. It’s very surprising what our children choose to take from us — willingly or not.

After being married for nearly 43 years it is impossible not to notice how Linda and I have absorbed parts of each other’s personas. We too have become mirrors. Like my children, the things you see looking back at you are not always the things you wanted to pass along. I would like to think that we both make an effort to borrow only the best from each other, but that is far from the truth. While good traits have been passed between us, less than admirable ones have made the same journey.

Stuck in the Middle With You

The thing that struck me most while looking at my double was that he, and subsequently I, looked awful with all that long hair. I didn’t even bother staying for the movie, but instead left the theater and walked straight to the nearest hair stylist. I sat down in the chair, told her what just happened, and gave her permission to do whatever she wanted to do to my hair. Perhaps my doppelgänger did the exact same thing and stability in the universe was maintained.

Have you met your doppelgänger? How was the experience? Were you excited, thrilled, frightened, or overwhelmed?

The two of us
running in from opposite corners
traveling as fast as we are able
before colliding somewhere in the middle

We pause and we mingle
we connect and we love deeply

Until restlessness overwhelms
and off we run again