Don't Prejudge a Look Alike

I wish I had a fifty-cent piece for every time in my life when someone told me I reminded them of someone else. Sometimes they say it’s the way I act. Sometimes it’s the way I talk. But mostly they say it’s the way I look. I guess that means I’m fairly generic when it comes to my personal appearance. And I’m okay with that. My best friend growing up was the one all the girls looked at and gawked over. Nobody ever accused him of looking like somebody else. He was his own man and was proud of it. Meanwhile, I was his tag along companion who reminded everybody of their third cousin. So quite often, I became the token “thrown-in friend” when a male was needed to complete the foursome necessary to constitute a double date. It beat staying at home. In 1980, the movie “Popeye” starring Robin Williams became popular during my sophomore year of high school and people told me I looked like him. Minus the muscles. During my early college years, the television show “Cheers” arrived on the scene. People told me I looked like Woody Harrelson. At first I was okay with that but when he later starred in “Natural Born Killers” (a truly disgusting movie), I decided I didn’t like being associated with Woody. And he’s done little since to change that perspective. Whatever the case, I still hear people tell me quite often that I remind them of such and such or so and so. Not that it should matter, but I usually ask whether or not they like that person. It’s a fair question. I think sometimes I see people that remind me of somebody else and almost immediately I make my first judgment about them based on the person they remind me of. Of course that’s not fair, but I must admit I’ve been guilty of that before. I think that’s why nobody wears a Hitler moustache this day and age. Yet people often make inaccurate judgments about our personalities based on who we look like. Which is why I’m glad no one has ever mentioned me resembling Richard Nixon, Ozzy Osbourne, that Blagojevich guy, the Unabomber, O.J. Simpson, or Rosie O’Donnell. Recently I attended a town hall meeting where a member of the U.S. House of Representatives spoke. I waited to meet him afterwards and upon shaking his hand he remarked that he seemed to remember us meeting before. I was pretty sure we hadn’t but I didn’t want to embarrass him so I kinda nodded and speculated that maybe we had. Then I mentioned that maybe he had seen my picture in the paper due to the little columns I write each week that appear in a few local newspapers. The look on his face told me that this was not the case. Embarrassed by my own presumptuousness, I then decided it was probably déjà vu all over again and I mumbled something about people saying quite often that I remind them of someone else. I should have known the vast majority of the local citizenry is oblivious to my columns- especially a Congressman. And even if he did stumble upon my column, he certainly wouldn’t bother looking at the picture. Oh, well, at least he didn’t think I was Woody Harrelson.