Doppleganger

Perhaps in an attempt to make up for the glitch in the system that caused him to send me an email saying I had missed my appointment - when I was sitting in the lobby, the unemployment counselor asked if I had ever been told I looked like someone.

Of course.

I waited for the usual response of either a teacher or an aunt. Oddly on more than one occasion, I've had complete strangers walk up to me and ask if I was a teacher.

It's weird.


He surprised me by saying Shirley Jones. She of "Oklahoma". And perhaps more famously for some of us - "The Partridge Family".

That was a new one and certainly the most flattering.
(Of course I have no idea what people's teachers and aunts look like - maybe Shirley Jones.)

 I have never been that pretty.

But it's possible we look similar in one aspect now - the hair.

My grandmother and great aunts all had/have gorgeous white hair and my cousins who were born the same year as me also went gray early. Something in the water, Mom always said.

Mine started as a teenager, around eighteen or so. My sister was braiding my hair, when suddenly she exclaimed with what was an extraordinary amount of younger sister glee - "Look what I found!", and began plucking out hair by what seemed like the fistful.
This painful process went on for quite a long period of time and I was beginning to wonder if there would be anything left to braid.
Mom noticed what was happening and screeched in horror - "Seven more would grow in its place!" My sister stopped, but I don't think she really wanted to.

Guess there was something to that particular superstition (or it was the water). By thirty the top of my head was completely white (it started at the top and worked down.)

Here's how it went down at the DMV when I got my first driver's license at almost thirty-one:
(employee makes eye contact with the form only as he checks off items)
Eyes?
Blue.
Height?
5'8"
Weight? (They did that in California - the horror!)
[weight]
Hair?
Brown.
The man's hand stopped in mid-check, he lifted his eyes and ever oh so drolly asked, "Ma'am, grey or white - which do you want?"

As a cautionary tale I told The Boy this is what happens when you have children very young (I turned twenty the day after he was born), which may have backfired since I still don't have any grandchildren.

On the up side - senior discounts have been offered since my early forties.