Look-a-Likes

I was in the Menlo Park Trader Joe's the other night, about to check out, when...

Trader Joe's employee: Don't you think he looks like Juan.
Other TJ's employee: Yeah, he does...Juan with dreadlocks.
Me: Who is this Juan?
TJ's employee: He works here, but he's not here now. You look just like him.

I'm sure just about everyone has had this type of experience before. I feel like I get this a lot - just today, someone told me that I look like their friend, who is a woman.

The most amazing "you look like..." story is from my junior and senior years in college. It was a series of "you look like.." situations, and several of them told me I looked like one specific person - Kevin.

More than a few times during those two years, I would have people come up to me, sometimes running, tap me on the shoulder, or say "hey" then see my face and say "oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else". This was odd, because not a lot of people at MSU looked like me in the late 1990s.

During the Spring semester of my junior year, I was in a cafeteria when a guy came up to me and something like this happened...

Guy: Hey, what's up?
Me (not having any idea who this person is): Nothing.
Guy: You don't remember me?
Me: No, I'm sorry, I don't know who you are.
Guy: We played basketball last week. You don't remember?
Me: I haven't played basketball is several years.

At this point, he got a little upset, thinking I was dissing him.

Guy: Man, you don't remember me, you're name's Kevin, right?!?
Me: No, my name is Jeff.

He was stunned. "Damn, you look just like this guy Kevin. I'm sorry, man".

That's how I learned Kevin's name. The next time someone mistook me for someone, I asked if the person's name was Kevin and sure enough, it was. This happened a couple of times during my senior year.

I told a friend about this Kevin story and they mentioned that there was a guy they had seen in the business school who looked "a little" like me. I decided to spend a lot of study time in the business library over the next several weeks.

I think I saw this Kevin once. There was a guy with dreadlocks, with glasses, about my build. I considered walking over and asking him his name but I didn't, because in my opinion, he looked nothing like me at all.

I don't know if that was Kevin, I guess I never will. Maybe it was Juan, and maybe he now works at the Menlo Park Trader Joe's.