Doubles

The other night I hung out with a woman I've been smiling and nodding at all year--her son is in M's grade at religious school and her kids go to afterschool at E's school, and eventually we saw each other enough times that we started to smile and nod, but that was it until we ended up sitting next to each other at Girl Authority, chatting during the intermission while E and her daughter shared snacks. She was very nice, but it was difficult to attend to her as her because she had the exact same voice as my friend S in California. Like the EXACT same. Like, not the first time she spoke I thought she sounded like S and then she just became herself. But like every single time she spoke I thought, she sounds exactly like S.

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I've been at M's school more often lately, for drop-off and pick-up (she is fully capable of going to and from school on her own, but she likes company, so we accomodate, or rather, S accomodates every morning, and I accomodate maybe one afternoon a week, but last week I did a couple of mornings too, for various reasons, I think mainly having to do with E and kindergarten orientation, plus we were at school one evening for the barbecue). There is a kindergarten mom (I know she's kindergarten, because they come out a different door) who looks just like my friend P, stands like her and wears her hair like her and dresses like her too. Every time I see her, I do a double-take, even though I know there is no reason for P to be at M's school, since she is dropping off and picking up her own kids at their school in City. I'm getting used to it now, and I don't really think she's P, but whenever I see her, I still think, there goes that woman who looks like P.

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I had a double in college. I wasn't too pleased with the situation, as I did not think she looked anything like me, nor did I want to look like her, but after the first several dozen times people said "Hi Liz!" to me, I accepted it. The thing is, she was the biggest coke dealer on campus, so people were always coming up to me at Sunday brunch and saying things like "What a party!" and "That stuff was great, can you get me some more?" and eventually I learned to just say "I'm not Liz," at which point they would inevitably stagger back and stare at me and say "Wow. You look just like her." The other thing is that her grandmother and my grandmother were friends in Brooklyn. But I never told about the coke.