attack of the dopplegangers

I was in Toronto this weekend (along with the rest of the world) visiting some friends and going to the theatah (snooty accent required) with my mom and cousin. We saw the "Sound of Music" of "How do you solve a problem like Maria" fame. The winner of the show and the girl who came in second split the role, so we saw the girl who came in second, Janna, who is, by all opinions, the better singer. It was really good! It was interesting so see how different it was from the film version. The big switches were that Baroness Schraeder sings with Max, twice, "my favourite things" is a duet between the Mother Superior and Maria, and the song in the thunderstorm is the "lonely goatherd", which admittedly, makes more noise to drown out the sounds of the storm. but enough about that!

The real reason for this post is the number of people I know that I thought I saw this weekend, that turned out not to be that person at all. Dopplegangers abounded.

The first was in the subway. I was with my best friend who is visiting from victoria, and i was convinced that the guy walking a bit ahead of us in the great trek to switch subway lines was Pat, a fellow grad student. The hair was right, the walk was right, the black hoodie was right, even the gestures and facial hair. i just couldn't see his face, because he was ahead of me. I almost followed him onto the wrong train just to see, but at the last moment, he looked my way, and the face was totally wrong. even my friend agreed with me that he looked remarkably like Pat, except the face. so weird.

Then, in the Eaton's Centre (yes, the one in t.o. is still called that) I saw a girl who looked very much like a friend i had gone to england with, on the other escalator. It looked so much like her, same hair colour, skin tone, height, her face even looked much the same, but it was just a little different than i remember. also, this girl had on a bright red coat and a purple beret, and i had always been trying to get my friend out of black and neutrals to no avail. That was really what convinced me that it wasn't her, but it may very well have been her, I haven't seen her in 4 years. I was way too chicken to yell out her name as she passed on the escalator though, just in case it wasn't her. shyness wins again!

I also saw a few other people that looked like people I know from various places, but have never really talked to, so i couldn't tell if they were dopplegangers or not, but the main convincing factor was always that the person in question was supposed to be on the other side of the country right now, so it was more likely that they were look-alikes.

Lesson for the day: If you want to meet your doppleganger, go to downtown Toronto around Christmastime.

In other doppleganger news, my father actually met his once when he was a kid. It was another kid in town's cousin from the states. He says it was really weird to meet someone who looks very much like you. It wasn't really an experience he would like to have a second time.

hmm, maybe searching out your doppleganger is a bad thing, and messes with the space-time continuum or something. cool. of course, what would really mess with the universe is if my dad found someone with the same name as he has, "Earlby". I am convinced that, like the Highlander, "there can be only one".