Young Evil Me

I’m a common variety of human being. By that, I mean that there are about a million guys who look like me. I see them all the time, and it creeps me out.

This has gotten worse over the years. Now I also see younger people who look like me at various ages. It’s hard to go in public anymore without at least once thinking, “Hey, there’s a little Scott from 1979!”

This problem reached the zenith of weird the other day. A large publication scheduled a photographer to take some pictures to accompany an article. The doorbell rings. I open it. And there I am, fifteen years ago, holding a camera, looking at myself.

I think that Young Me had a similarly strong reaction, as in “Good lord, I’m going to turn into one of THOSE.” It was an awkward moment. But it got worse.

Imagine spending an hour having your picture taken by a photographer who looks like you, but younger. He’s dressed as you would. He talks like you. He even has a profession you could easily imagine doing in an alternate universe. And now he’s taking your picture. Let me tell you, it was like looking at a mirror’s reflection in another mirror. There was something infinite about it, and not in a good way.

Then came the kicker. We went outside for most of the photos, to “take advantage of the light,” Young Me explained. He made me pose in various positions that all had the same finish: “Now turn slightly, and look toward the sun.”

Seriously. He told me to look directly at the sun. And he did it with a straight face. That is when I became convinced that this alleged other person was indeed me. If I were a photographer, I’d be having people stare at the sun until they were blind too. I’d also have them disrobe outdoors on cold days and sit on frozen park benches. That’s the fun of being a photographer. Otherwise, all you’re doing is looking through a hole and pushing a button. What kind of job is that?

Luckily, I know all of my own tricks. So I declined my doppelganger’s offer to blind myself for his entertainment. But I respected him for trying.

I have not ruled out the possibility that he was a time-traveling me. As a precaution, I went back to my office and moved everything he touched back to its original position, thus saving humankind from annihilation. That’s just one more example of how I’m working behind the scenes to make the world a better place.

You’re welcome.

Comments

[reader]

Try learning about MBTI. It will explain a lot (within certain limits). I guess that the letters INTP will get some added meaning for you.

[Crystal]

Well, am I ever glad I went into the archives today ... I'd previously been a subscriber to the daily Dilbert at my work email, but haven't been at work for over a year now and finally have a computer and internet at home, and am once again a happy subscriber. Anyway, I knew I must've missed some DNRC newsletters so read the last one, from October '06. In doing so I not only discovered this blog ... 'scuse me, this BRILLIANT blog ... but also Gods Debris. Thanks, Scott, for posting it online for us cheapos ~ am enjoying it immensely! Anyway, as for doppelgangers ... I've never had the freakish occurrence of meeting my own, but I have seen someone else's. A couple of summers ago, I was attending a national conference for my employer. From across a crowded room, half a country away from the city where I live, I saw the exact twin of my heterosexual lover. I was standing to one side of a large conference room (over 200 attendees), leaning on a chair, laughing at some remark a presenter had made, when I happened to glance across the room, and was absolutely shocked breathless to lock eyes with a this guy smiling at me. The *exact* same face. Exact same smile. Same eyes. Same hair and build. Maybe(?) looked a few years younger than my paramour, but I tell you, for a split second I honestly thought I was losing my mind. Especially since he had that same mischievious look on his face whenever he looked at me with -ahem- blatant lust in his eyes. I was absolutely floored, and tried for the remainder of the day to find out who he was, what office he was from, department he was with, anything ... with no luck. And I only glimpsed him a couple of times during the rest of the day. Was it my lover, teleporting himself across a couple of thousand miles, to leer at me temptingly and tease me with desire? Or was it his honest-to-God doppelganger? In honour of my sanity, I leaned toward the latter explanation. What an experience ... and it left me wondering what might have transpired had we managed to actually meet and spend a few minutes alone together?! ;-) WOO-HOO!

[Xena]

Anagrams of "Young Evil Me"

I Log My Venue

My Oven Guile

Unveil My Ego

Evil indeed.

[Nomi]

Scott, I google imaged you again after reading this just to make sure that my memory of your image was correct. It was. You've made a few references to not being the most attractive fellow. Nonsense. I looked at fairly recent photos, and I declare you to still have it going on. Most assuredly. I didn't see any 15-year-old Young You photos, but I'd bet $5 that he has nothing on you.

[Dan the Car Dude]

I am 43 years old. I still carry a note with me that I wrote when I was 14.

The note reads, "If commercial time travel ever becomes possible in my life time, I will return to this shed on this date and say hello to myself.
Dated 12 June 1977"

After I write the note, I looked around to see if an older version of myself was ready to walk into the shed. I even jumped up and went outside to see if he was lurking where he could not be readily seen.

Sigh....

(The shed was an old building away from the house that we converted into my bedroom.)

[ranon]

Woah,
Are you trying to tell people that you are not evil. You are plenty evil, as evidenced by the posts on evolution, god, and varied other topics.

[concatenator]

I've heard friends point out other people, and say they look like me, but its always someone far worse looking and worse dressed than me.
Obviously, if time traveling and parallel worlds are possible, I'm living in the best possible world. I won!

Have you considered the other theory - that you may be the time-traveling one from the other world? It would certainly account for some things. Dilbert may be your plan to destroy this world.

"Scott, he ain't from around here."

[elliot]

erm.. uh.. wha... ? huh? So, not to say you're weird or anything like that, but if you ever get old and senile, what do you suppose it will be like? Some people get senile in their young age too, because their wealth allows them to escape all those cultural routines that bind most of us to normalcy. Not you, however. You probably can't afford your own jet, as you say, and even if you could, you still don't seem like the type to do lines of coke at 30,000 feet, but you do live below your means, what with your calling the dealership and buying a new boring car just like the old one. Eccentric? Nooo.. You're transcending eccentricism. Reading this blog seems to me like this must be like what it would be to peer into the mind of a cataconic autistic, if one could so peer. Placid and normal-looking on the outside, but on the inside, yes, on the inside, a giant fun house teaming with Ronald McDonald clones and gremlins and PHBs, a single Tom Green robot in a braids and a Hello Kitty mini skirt and the Kids In The Hall kids.. "I'm crushing your head... I'm crushing your head..." Philosotainment? How about calling it Gonzo comedy writing... I mean, not to glorify it or anything.. there's overlap with lots of different genres, including standup, but in other ways it's unique too. This blog is different from the ranting and raving on other blogs in the same way that a good standup act is different from someone who's 'a funny person...' It's an occasional talent that's been developed and polished to a level of consistency such that you've made an art out of it. That you apparently didn't have to try that hard at it is the scary part :)

[Chris]

Scott, I could pretend my comment had something to do with this topic, but I won't insult your intelligence. I went to see Hannibal Rising yesterday. It might not be your kind of thing, but that's incidental. Thing was, I wasn't sure whether to bother, 'cos the critics blasted it, poked fun at it, and generally made me feel I'd waste my $15.
Thing was, my wife and I and my adult kids all enjoyed it. I looked at one of the review websites, and found the critics universally hated it, whilst the majority of 'normal' people that chose to see it, enjoyed it.
Which makes me think; there two possible scenarios. Either it's only a small proportion of the population like this kind of stuff, which doesn't include most critics, so they're not going to like it anyway. Or, critics are a parasitic bunch who have no talent themselves and have to make a living by trying to make witty comments at the expense of others. I suspect one or two critics slated this one, and the rest didn't want to appear silly by liking it (some of the criticisms were historical inaccuracy) and thus jumped on the bandwagon. My daughter is an honours student majoring in English and History, and she enjoyed it. What's your take on critics, and why to they slam anything that's actually entertaining whilst the rest of us enjoy it?

[yatpay]

Doppelgangers are weird. There's a guy on my campus that looks almost exactly like me. We call him Notpay, since my nickname is Yatpay. ...we thought it was clever.

[napoleon dynamite]

I startd a new job recently, and was told I look just like Napoleon Dynamite. I had never heard of him, so I had to google him. As soon as his picture flashed on the screen I freaked: "Gaa!" that's me, only younger! Now I've got a new nickname at work. How am I doin'?

[sinister]

preventing a rift, by ajusting the reality from your universe eh?

Hiro Nakamura can save you!

[zlh]

the "evil" is redundant.

[some dude]

Be careful the time machine system is so dangerous.......wait a second you ain't martian you are not supposed to know

[Long Story Longer]

I have a friend who looks like everyone. Every time we go out someone sees her and says, "Do I know you . . .?" She says, "No, I just have one of those faces."

Anyway, I appreciated this post because I have a bit of a big b-day coming up (36) and while I haven't had a recent run-in with a Young Me, I do think in these kinds of "what if" terms. Thanks :)

[Chen]

THANK YOU.

[Kevin Kunreuther]

On a serious note, do you hallucinate on purpose because life is such a mundane predictable experience for you, you make up stuff to entertain yourself (being such a gregarious lunatic, you have no problem sharing your fantasies with your blog readers)?

[Kevin Kunreuther]

You idiot! Why did you move everything back? Now we all ARE truly doomed. And I was supposed to win the lottery tonight, too. Thanks for nothing ....

[Jayne Marie]

P.S. Unrelated to this...just got back from "Terrabithia" and it bore distinct resemblance to enjoying the ride in the SUV...then getting hit by it...and ending up with the SUV being parked on your chest. Oh, sure, they hoisted it up a little...but it was the Hoss & Lil Joe doomed feeling anyway. But hey, nobody mumbled!

Just in case you were thinking about catching a "good" movie with the family this weekend...

[Shaun]

I used to be friends with one of my 'clones' in highschool. It was kinda creepy in a cool way - for fun we switched one day and went to each other's schools.
It was surreal - all these people knew 'me' but I had no idea who they were.

[shryko]

you can beat them at their own game... either sunglasses, or keep your eyes closed... and directors get to do it to actors all the time, too.

[Gleetnorx]

I just thought of another strange thing that happens to me a lot along these lines.

Strangers are always coming up to me and asking if I'm so&so, someone they knew ... bums in the haight, in Hawaii ... it's gone on for years.
It just happened the last time about two weeks ago in a biker bar.
This has begun to worry my cuz what if it's someone with which they have a grudge or vengeance curse or soemthing like that?

Another funny thing that happened was one day my mother in law, RIP, was visiting out here in Hawaii. She was a devout catholic and so we'd taken her to mass down at the Painted Church, a local tourist attraction cuz it's a Catholic Church with frescoes of weird religious scenes in it, you know, like good converted Hawaiians or unrepenent chinamen with their pigtails burning in hell, that sort of thing.
I'm standing there in the parking lot and this typical polyester clothed tourist walks up to me.
"You're Randle Brashear, aren't you?"
"Uh, yeah. How did you know?"
"I'm Bubba Bollocks, your arresting officer from that pot bust back in Austin in '75. Pleasure to see you again."
"Sure, aloha."
Spooked the crap out of me.

[canadian]

I burn barns, just in case a time-traveller made them. I'm just doin' my duty.

[jerry wolfe]

Did you at least ask what his mother's maiden name was?

Just wondering.......

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[Shan]

Do what I do to avoid that situation... move to a country thousands of miles away. I only see other versions of myself when I go back to Pakistan (although when I do, I'm baffled by the fact that I look just like the other people there).