Wouldn't you want to find someone who looks exactly like yourself? If you are like most
men, you must think that you are a pretty good looking guy - so, why not have twice as
much of a good thing, right? (Being a man, I have no idea what women think about their
looks and whether they'd want to acquire an identical twin all of a sudden.) But, no
matter whether you are a man or a woman, there is something strangely comforting if people
around you share your traits, background and interests. By the way, did you know that the
fastest way to make a new acquaintance to like you, is mimicking his or her body language?
So forget that old wife's tale about opposites attracting - people like people who look,
talk and think like them. But - I digress.
They say, there is about a billion different ways genes can arrange themselves into
various facial features - which means there is only a billion different faces to go
around. Just a billion faces for six billion people living on Earth! That, pretty much
means, that all of us have another five exact lookalikes roaming about. Imagine that -
somewhere on this planet there are a few people who look exactly like you! Freaky.
People get really excited when I tell them about this, until they catch their breath and
ask me to list my sources. "Is this actually true?" they ask. Well, I vaguely
recall reading about it from a pretty reputable scientific site somewhere on the Internet,
although the name of the site eludes me at the moment. And, do you really need someone to
tell you what you might have already suspected? I bet you've noticed folks who look
EXACTLY like your auntie Jill or your sister's husband or even your parents. Once my
friend was in Florida and he saw a woman who looked so much like his mother that he had to
come up to her and ask her for her name, just to make sure - even though he knew exactly
that his actual mother was in New York at the time. He asked the old lady if he may take
her photo and, I must admit, she look like his mother's identical twin.
It happens to me all the time - I might see a person in the street who looks a lot like
some friend of mine - and, I always wish to put them side by side to compare the actual
likeness and to entertain them, myself and the spectators in the process. However, I am
too shy to come up to complete strangers and bother them with strange requests. So, I did
the next best thing - I created a website where people could upload their photos and other
people could find their lookalikes, unimaginatively called FindMyLookalike.com . The site
spits out two photos at random and lets you decide how similar they look on a one-to-ten
scale.
The first thing I did after completing work on the site was uploading my own photo.
Visitors to the site got to work and pretty soon my lookalikes were selected from tens of
thousands of lucky contenders. To say that I was disapointed would be an understatement.
Although there was some resemblance, all my alleged "lookalikes" were much less
good-looking than I am. Apparently, I am the only one who thinks that - my wife and all my
friends tell me that FindMyLookalike did a pretty good job. Maybe so - but, I am still
searching for that magnificent human being who is my exact lookalike. Sooner or later, I
will find him - it shouldn't be too hard, after all, there are at least five of Me hiding
about, just waiting to be discovered.
