Double Troubles Part 3

Dear reader, I realize in these posts that I’m stretching the definition of “doppelganger” a bit beyond the classic supernatural connotation, but I think I have a good reason, if you will bear with me.

In the spring after our son was born, I ordered some supplies from a mail-order catalog, including a set of diaper clips – learning to diaper a happy, squirmy baby made me fear poking him with the traditional diaper pin, and this seemed to be a nice solution to that anxiety. Weeks passed without the order arriving, and after contacting the company, I received an irate letter accusing me of being a thief, accompanied with a copy of a UPS receipt purportedly signed by yours truly. It wasn’t my signature, and the address was on the opposite side of town.

I managed to track down this other “John Stanton” and met with him at his house. We both dropped a few names, and it turned out that we weren’t related. When the package was delivered, he was in the process of moving to his new home, and he had the box addressed to me on a table by his front door, still unopened. I had ordered the shipment sent to my P.O. Box, but it had been shipped by UPS, which simply had delivered it to the first John Stanton they could find.

My documentation of the miss-delivery earned me a profuse apology from the author of the above-mentioned irate letter.

Fourteen years later, I purchased a used gray Nissan Stanza from a dealership not far from home. A few weeks later, I contacted the dealer regarding some minor issue, and when the salesman read my address from his computer screen, it wasn’t mine, but it seemed familiar. Not far from the address where I had picked up the “Happy Family Products” package with the diaper clips all those years before. It seems that the other John Stanton had purchased the same make, model and color car, from the same dealership, just the day before I had bought mine. The only difference was, he had an automatic transmission while I had purchased one with a stick.

One of the lighter moments in my eerie, discordant dance with Synchronicity.

Know Your Double 

Double Troubles Part 1

Double Troubles Part 2

Double Troubles Part 2: The Imposter

One would think that the most mundane version of the "doppelgänger" would be the imposter.  No supernatural hokum to contend with, no worries of neurological glitches.  However, the damage they do can haunt you for years.  It can't be undone.

 

My father was a police officer, as I've mentioned before on this blog.  On the police force were two other officers, one with the same last name, and one who bore an uncanny resemblance to my dad.  The latter was a friend of my father's.  Murdered in the City-County building, by a criminal he was taking to lockup.  My father tracked the killer to his hideout, then as was the right thing to do, called in the troops to make the arrest, and walked away, avoiding an explosive confrontation.  He shunned the credit for the catch.  I think that took a lot of will and professionalism.

 

One day when I was in junior high, my father was enjoying a day off when he received a phone call most parents hope they will never receive: "Your son has been arrested.  Come down and bail him out."  Not pleasant for any parent, but believe me, it's worse if you're a cop.  Understandably upset, my folks rushed to change clothes and get ready for the long drive downtown.

 

As they pulled out of the driveway, it occurred to my father to check by my school-it was only a block and a half away.  My folks stopped in at the principal's office first.  My schedule was checked, and they were escorted to the room where I was supposed to be.  When they peeked through the narrow window, there I was, sitting in my assigned seat.

 

When I returned home that afternoon, Dad was in a great mood.  He told me all about what had happened, and laughed with relief.  He didn't bother to call back and inform anybody of the mistake, but was determined to find out what had happened, during his next shift.

 

Mom, on the other hand, was fuming in the kitchen.  She was still angry, and eyed me with mistrust and suspicion for weeks.  It was bad enough that I tried to joke her out of her mood.  What had I done?  Did I break out of jail, escape with a jet pack (Thunderball was big at the time), and then slip into my seat moments before they peeked in my classroom?  Still, Mom treated me as if I had somehow gotten away with something.

 

Later, Dad told me that the other Stanton at work also had a son, who was a few years older than me.  Fearing his own father's wrath, he had bought himself only a little time by giving my name when he was arrested.  To this day, I don't know his first name, or what he was arrested for.  I can't attest to the fact that he was ever arrested, just what I was told at the time.

 

I do know that, when my father was up for a promotion he had hard earned, the Captain had said, "Promote Stanton, and transfer him to Internal Affairs."  Instead, they promoted the Stanton who was already in Internal Affairs.  Politics being what they are, Dad had to wait for the next promotion cycle.

 

Spin the clock ahead, to around the time Flo and I had been married for about a year.  We still lived in the tiny third-floor apartment on Central Avenue.  My father had retired from the police force, and for a time served as a Sherriff's deputy.  In uniform, he approached me as I was heading off to work.  He had a very serious look on his face.  I was told that he had received a distressing call from another police officer.  He was told that I had run up to a cordoned-off crime scene, and tried to push my way in, demanding to know what had happened to a murdered woman, with whom I was supposedly having an affair.  He was told that I was offensive enough to the officers that they were about to arrest me, when I told them I was Police Officer John Stanton's son John, and that I had made further demands per his authority.  My father was told that out of respect for him, I had not been arrested, but it was made clear how pissed they were at me.

 

Dad then said, "I'm only going to ask you this once, son, was that you?"

 

I told him the truth.  No.  I didn't have the vaguest clue what he was talking about.

(What about modus operandi? If it worked before...)

 

After that day, Dad didn't look at me the same.  He still loved me, but he didn't quite trust me.

 

To this day, I still don't know if the imposter was the other Stanton boy, or if someone else knew enough about both my father and myself to leverage the name.

 

As far as I know, that was the last time someone used my name when arrest was threatened.  My father has been gone for a long time, so there wouldn't be any advantage now.

 

At some point, the Imposter sheds its cocoon and takes flight as Rumor.

 

Rumor is a peculiar form of the Double.  If it is juicy, smarmy or threatening enough, it takes on a life of its own, mutating as it moves from mouth to ear, to mouth again.  It can overshadow and outlive both its creator and its subject.  Like some of its supernatural counterparts, there is no known way to kill it.

 

An extra shadow, one that often precedes me, and still follows wherever I go.

 See Double Troubles Part 1

Double Troubles Part 3

 

 

 

Double Troubles Part 1



I think I’m an average looking guy.  Even a bald head is not such a novelty these days, so you are not as likely to notice me now as much as you might have singled me out some years ago had I been bald then.  One thing I would assume, though: if you had a friend who looked somewhat like me and at some point observed me across a street or a room, as you approached me, I am sure that you would notice enough differences not to confuse me with him for long.

I imagine something would have to be a dead giveaway.  If not directly in my face, then the color of my eyes, or my clothes, the way I move, my choice of words, the sound of my voice—something.  Even if I had an identical twin—which I don’t—there would have to be a tell.

This year marks the third time I’ve run into someone who thought I was someone else. (Fourth, if you count the first guy twice.) Not the casual mistake of an acquaintance.  Not an old friend who has changed so much I have a hard time connecting his face to his name.  Someone who adamantly and persistently asserts that I am someone whom he knows, and sees on a regular basis.

The first one on my list was a guy of average height and build; seedy, smirky, he at first thought I was playing some kind of a game with him when I politely told him he must have mistaken me for someone else.  He insisted we had been friends for years, and frequented the same watering hole just down the road.  When I told him I don’t drink, he seemed genuinely confused, even hurt.

This was about a ten-minute walk from home; I saw him twice in the space of a few days, at the same place while out on a stroll.  The second encounter was creepy.  He approached me with a broad swagger, jolly and smug, apparently sure I’d drop my “pretense” from the other day and let him in on the joke.  I again politely declined and repeated my assertion that he had confused me with someone else.  The friendly façade dropped in an instant—he was getting pissed, so I got up in his face.  In one of the strangest body-language morphs I’ve witnessed, it was as if rage and fear had plowed into each other headlong, and fear had won.  In one instant, he looked as if he was just about to take a swing at me, in the very next moment, he backed away with a look of horror in his eyes.  I gave him a cold stare, and you would have thought I had stuck a knife in his gut.

As I resumed my walk, he stalked me for a block, muttering, coming closer, then backing off, as if the neurochemistry of fear and courage pushed and then pulled him.  His pattern mirrored incidents in which an angry dog circled me, growling, barking menace, working up enough rage to attack.

I watched the man in my peripheral vision and maintained my stride, just a bit concerned that if I turned or stopped, he’d charge.  Apparently fear or discretion prevailed, and he backed down.

The second incident on my list also took place while on a walk, also about ten minutes from home, but in a different direction.  In this instance, I had taken my notebook to Steak & Shake, and worked on some story notes and lists; when it was time to meet up with Flo, a short, scrawny fellow approached me.  The exchange was similar to the first encounter above, and this fellow also became quite pissed when I told him I didn’t know him.  When I insisted the second time, he snarled, “I don’t like you since you shaved your head.”

That was a few years ago.  This year, Flo and I were shopping together, and we split up to find different items, at a thrift store close to the Speedway race track.  While scanning an isle for, I believe, a flavor of mustard I favor, this huge guy came up to me.  He was friendly, like we were pals.  Like the two previous guys, he acted as if we regularly saw each other, as if it had only been a day or two since we’d last visited.  He also seemed put out that I didn’t know him, as if there were something wrong with me, or else I was playing a cruel game on him.  I calmly assured him I wasn’t who he thought I was, and he started dropping names of people we supposedly knew, as if he were trying to jog an amnesiac’s memory.  After blankly shaking my head at six or eight names I’d never heard before, he became impatient, perhaps a bit angry.  I tried to excuse myself and slip past him, but he blocked my way and became more insistent.  He threw two or three more names at me, and nothing rang a bell.  I think we got the willies at the same moment, and just parted ways.  Still curious, I cut to the front of the store, intending to stake out a place where I could watch him leave, see what kind of vehicle he got into, or which direction he took – but he was simply gone.  I grid-searched the store, but never got another glimpse of him.

In all three cases, I made a point of getting up close enough, talking enough that something should have clued them in to the fact that I wasn’t who they thought I was.  In case number two, apparently my “double” had started shaving his head around the time I did.  In all three instances, instead of realizing their mistake, not one of them could be convinced I wasn’t who they thought.  Of the three, the huge guy seemed more upset and confused instead of angry, though the choice of street names he tossed off at me added him to the other two as volatile characters I would not likely count as friends.

The one thing that puzzles me about my own behavior in each of these instances, is that in none of them did it occur to me to ask the name of my apparent double.  If this happens again, that will definitely be my first question.

See Double Troubles Part 2: The Impostor
Double Troubles Part 3
Memoriae Obscura

Doppelganger Field Guide