I once read a theory that somewhere in the world there is a person exactly like me. Not only that, but there is a person exactly like each one of us: we all have an exact match somewhere in the world. It is one of those theories that are fun to talk about but impossible to prove or disprove. In fact, I thought it was a stupid theory when I first heard it. Come to think of it, maybe I didn’t read it after all; maybe it was a Star Trek episode.
I figured if there was someone exactly like me, they had to be in love with someone exactly like Cyndi, and drive a red Toyota Tacoma pickup, and read lots of books, and have friends exactly like my friends, and have run in 41 consecutive pairs of New Balance shoes. How could there be someone exactly like all that and yet we haven’t bumped into each other somewhere sometime somehow?
I almost had a double, once. When I was a student at the University of Oklahoma there was a guy who looked a lot like me. He wore the same style glasses. He had the same brown curly hair. He had the same reddish-brown beard. He was approximately the same height and build as me. In fact, we looked so much alike, there was one time when his roommate walked over to my table in the cafeteria and talked to me for several minutes about his schedule for the week. I didn’t know who he was at the time, and didn’t know how to respond to this talkative stranger who was giving me so many specific detail about his life. I just sat there, nodding my head. He walked away thinking I was his roommate.
What made me think about this was something that happened last Saturday afternoon while I was digging through old boxes and throwing stuff away in preparation for our move into a new house next fall. I discovered an essay fragment I’d written in 1995 to read at the Midland Writer’s Group weekly meeting. Apparently, I had checked a book out of the Midland County Library titled “Meditations from the Breakdown Lane, by James Shapiro. I read it the first time in 1986, soon after it was first published, and I wanted to read it again. As I was thumbing through the book I saw a yellow sticky note stuck on page 45. It was the same kind of sticky note I’ve used for many years to mark my favorite passages for copying into my journal when I can’t use a highlighter.
In 1995, I wrote, “Surely that isn’t my sticky note from 1986, is it? But who else would have put it in there … my mirror me? How many people are there in Midland County who use yellow sticky notes to mark passages in obscure distance running books?”
But to claim it as my own sticky note meant it had been stuck on page 45 since 1986, and it also probably meant no one else had read the book since then.
I wrote, “When I returned the book to the library I left the sticky note on the same page. Who knows, I might read it again in the year 2005. I wonder if it will still be there.”
So on Monday I went to the library at my first opportunity and found that same book on the shelf, and yes, I am almost too embarrassed to write this since it seems too contrived to be true, there was a yellow sticky note on page 45. Still. Really.
Was it the same one? Had it been there since 1986? Was it mine? Without a C.S.I. lab at my disposal it was impossible to prove or disprove.
This time, however, I took the note out of the book and threw it away. A librarian once told me that the glue from a sticky note will eventually soak into the paper and destroy the book. I don’t know how long that takes, but apparently longer than twenty years.
I must say, finding that sticky note again, for the second time, was spooky. It felt like scheduled déjà vu.
It felt like a glimpse into who I am, and how much I’m still like who I use to be. It felt more revealing than even the old photos from 1995 that I found in the same box with the essay. It felt like I have someone to live up to. Me.
