Photo by Khaled Ghareeb on Unsplash
Most of us take pleasure in our own identity, in waking up inside ourselves, in knowing who we are. We like the feeling that we are unique. No one exactly like us has ever existed—a happy thought for most of us. So when our individuality is challenged, it can be disorienting.
For some reason, people often think they know me. It happens to this day, perhaps once a month. I humor these people and we compare our schools and camps and colleges and cities. This never leads anywhere. We’ve never met. They think we have because of my face. I don’t like to think my face is common, but apparently it is.
It was especially annoying in my twenties and thirties living in Manhattan. I had one particular double, a Barbara. People would see me and say, “Hi, Barbara!” Barbara and I seemed to move in the same circles, but I never met her. Was she ever called “Cathy”? I wondered how an encounter between us would unfold, if we would see the similarity for ourselves, if we would be pleased or dismayed by our doppelganger. Or maybe one of us would be flattered, the other insulted.
People have said I look like Penny Marshall, Shelley Duvall, and Joan Crawford. I don’t see it, and, furthermore, these three women look nothing alike. Of the three, I look most like Marshall, but it’s not an uncanny resemblance.
Penny Marshall
Shelley Duvall
Joan Crawford
I’m still waiting to finally meet Barbara!
When I tried to get the website CatherineHiller.com, someone had nabbed it before me. (I had to settle for CatherineHiller.net.) This was my name-double, a French painter who now lives in Melbourne. She is twenty years younger than I and very beautiful. I wouldn’t mind if there was some confusion between us! I got in touch with her, and we joked about having an event together: Catherine Hiller + Catherine Hiller: I would read at a gallery where her paintings were showing.
About fifteen years ago, we met in real life when she was visiting New York. We walked along the High Line, which had recently opened, and we shopped at a clothing store, Voltaire & Zadig. I still have the blue shirt I bought that afternoon. Catherine was just as goodlooking in person as online, but somehow it wasn’t a thrilling encounter. We didn’t have the rapport you might think we would have, and we made no easy banter. I don’t remember whether we spoke English or French: either way, one of us was struggling. So maybe that was part of it. Or maybe we were not so pleased, after all, that this major identifyer, our name, was being shared with somebody else.
My third double is my life-twin. Several years ago, she wrote an essay in NextTribe, an online venture for women who want to “age boldly.” Her piece was about marrying a man sixteen years her junior. She was Jewish, he was not. She was a writer, he was a musician.
She had just described my life. So I wrote to her, and we met for lunch. We hit it off at once. We became friends, and our husbands played music together. She and I had made the same choices, and that was a much more compelling bond than looking alike or sharing a name.
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Have you ever had a double?
Hi Barbara. Or shall I say Penny? When I saw her photo, I thought it was you. If you're going to have a twin, she's a good one.
Remember Kurt Vonnegut's term "grandfalloon"? An artificial grouping. Classmates, people who share the same name, even family members. All of those groupings are superficial, aren't they? You are unique. Like me. Like Mark. We may be 23rd cousins, but no group captures us.
So what's this Buddhist thing about non-duality, how all things are one? Artificial distinctions, individuality a myth. I'll take uniqueness. Humor me in my illusions.
Thanks for writing this.
I’ve had a few in various stages of my life. As a kid, I was occasionally compared to the actor Ron Howard, “Hey, it’s Richie Cunningham!” He was a character in the 70s sitcom “Happy Days.” When I became a young adult, I was compared to Ted Danson, during his “Cheers” days. More often though, people compared to Bill Walton, a star basketball player for UCLA, and later on, for the Portland Trail Blazers. I see the resemblance, but if you put us together in a lineup, I would be a midget compared to him; he was 8 inches taller than me!
A couple of times in my life I’ve been compared to Robert Redford, which thrilled me. He was my Hollywood idol growing up. To see a red head guy as a leading man gave this kid much hope for a happy adulthood.