You Look Just Like….

We human beings are, I should imagine, a tad more analytical than the rest of the species we share this planet with. Although this is merely an assumption, how would we ever know how analytical cats and dogs are, for example.

As humans’ thirst for knowledge and detail is something I am more familiar with, I’ll focus on one particular trait that I hate to admit I possess. It’s a pattern I easily and critically recognized in others until it dawned on me that I was no better.

What is it? Well, in a nutshell, I compare new acquaintances, colleagues, friends, friends’ partners with those I believe they look like. Not necessarily celebrities, although that makes for an obvious choice. But I will see someone and it’s almost as if my brain is programmed to send keen signals to my memory centre and inquire into whom the new kid in town looks like. Google images have helped a lot in supporting my individual cases.

Over the years I must have seen them all: from Klaus Kinski to Maradonna, Vanessa Paradis to Bono and moving on to an African American DJ at a party who – to me – looked the spitting image of my Italian neighbour upstairs.

It is not something I am proud of, especially when it becomes clear that my comparison is not welcome. Many a times, I’d declare in a victor’s voice that so and so are the spitting image of, say, the girls’ gay friend in Sex and the City. Bingo, got him right there! The look on their face indicates that they’d hoped for more! I’ve been on the receiving end of an unwanted look alike statement and boy, it was no fun. This is not the place to create inaccurate associations in your minds, suffice to say I was once compared to a reputable singer. No, it wasn’t JLo… I listened to the comment, I reasoned that my dignity was being put to the test and smiled it off politely not without a degree of grudge against the “opinion leader” who’d instantly found his nodding supporters. Well, at least she is talented ( which, when it comes to singing, I’m not)…

Nor was it great fun to have this guy in a bar in Spain stare at me with a mix of horror and filial love only to reveal to me that I was the carbon copy of his (now dead) mother. His intake of alcohol and God knows what else that afternoon contributed to the intensity of his feelings I’m sure, but how freaky had it become when the guy started asking me if I remembered how I used to feed him dinner when he was a small child? At this point it’s worth adding that he was quite a bit older than me…

Lesson here being that sometimes silence is indeed gold.

I do have a match in this respect (someone who may not look like me but certainly behaves similarly) and that is my colleague G from work. G will understand my otherwise inexplicable need for associations. He almost has a little ritual: one of our (male) clients has a very distinctive “cool glasses/ funky hairdo” look. To G this particular man looks just like another client of ours, only this time we’re talking about a “she” and she is 30 years older than our guy. And G is no amateur, he will bring accurate supporting proofs of his statements.

I sometimes identify this sport as bullying in others, but I guess the difference with them is that they make light of their often harsh views. I prefer to spare those who need sparing, but nothing is going to stop me from seeing Michael Winner sat in my office day in day out. All he has to do is say the Esure line and my point will be instantly seen by most.

The guilt within having been unleashed, I can go one step further and admit to a very deeply rooted belief in groups of people having their parallel peers in the animal reign. For example, eversince I was a child, I would immediately see the bird, fish, dog, horse in those around me.

This is when anonymity comes in handy otherwise I wouldn’t blame those of you who’d be inclined to call a shrink on me…

Instead, what you could do, is indulge in this deep conversation and reassure me that you, too are into comparing and also that you too see the animal within as an obvious fact of life. Who do you look like or should I say what do you look like?

I can tell those of you I know….