“You look familiar…”
by dixie
I hear this phrase with surprising frequency, leaving me with the conclusion that I have extremely ordinary genes. So many people seem to have a cousin who looks a lot like me that when someone says, “Do I know you?” I assume they too have a forgotten cousin with long hair, big eyes, and glasses. The most notable (and ludicrous) example happened while I was travel(l)ing in Italy for the first time, wandering through a statue garden at dusk, and ended up having a conversation in a confused mix of phrasebook Italian and pidgin French with a man who swore he’d seen me before.
This weekend at GenCon, no fewer than seven people gave me the now instantly recognizable wide-eyed look and said, “You look so familiar,” including one man dressed impressively in a feathered hat and full-length cloak who was too busy looking impressive to stop walking and talk to me beyond that sentence. I didn’t expect any of those people to actually know me.
The jaw-dropping moment of truth happened Saturday morning as I was waiting outside my hotel to either be picked up by the airport shuttle (transportation was complicated) or split a cab fare with a fellow gamer who was also waiting outside. A couple exited the hotel and looked at us. They offered us both a lift, as they’d rented a car, and we headed to the parking lot. On the way, the question came up and I launched into my stock answer involving genetics and blank features. “Unless you gamed in DC…or live in LA…” I ended, trailing off.
“Yeah, I live in LA.”
“Really? What part?”
The conversation spiralled this way until we determined that this stranger works in my building, one floor upstairs from me. Indeed, I looked familiar because he’d seen me in stairwells and at the adjacent coffee shop. The other passenger listened with the quiet amazement only possible when you’re up too early to create a more verbose response to astonishing phenomena. Not only did this person work upstairs from me, but he plays D&D (probably 4th ed.) and is looking to add another person or two to the game.
This neatly solves the question of how I will get my gaming fix between now and when I graduate, which is increasingly likely to happen in March.
Comments
Ah, the old “You look familiar” scenario. I keep on getting that too, but it’s not as bad as it used to be – back in college, I was regularly confused for people’s cousins, brothers or friends. Apparently, there were quite a few people with my face, voice and mannerisms running around the country having a much better time than I was. Bah.
These days I don’t bother with a complicated answer involving familiar facial types, Ireland being a shallow petri-dish of a gene-pool, reincarnation, deja-vu or any other such stuff. I just tell them that I was on Crimeline.
Another possibility that I don’t usually mention is that I have two sisters who look a lot like me and third who kinda looks like I would if I was cute and stylish. With that many bags of similar genes gallivanting across the country (and sometimes the world), there’s a higher than usual chance that someone’s seen someone who really does look like me.
As an aside, when I see someone who looks familiar I can sometimes peg the familiarity to a person I really do know, and draw initial conclusions about the stranger’s ethnic background. I was a lot better at this when I was in uni than I am now.
Because you are no longer in uni?
Not really. There’s not a good term for “working like a slave in an institution I don’t get to see much of in order to get a qualification I might not use.”
Your reply fills me with hope and joy.
.. but surely they know you from the mass rallys and televised effigy burnings of your foes?