Do I Know You?

I was the first car waiting at a stop light on my usual morning journey.

I double take a silver Honda Accord with a middle-aged woman as the driver.  She had round glasses, curly black shoulder-length hair, and a certain posture I recognized.  Suddenly I place her, IT WAS JEANIE.

'HEY!'  I'm waving with a big smile.  'HEY JEANIE!'  My heart is leaping.  My jerky movements prove this.

Then I suddenly realize that Jeanie was the office secretary ... of my high school.  And since I went to high school in Pennsylvania and I now live in North Carolina, unless Jeanie realized what a paradise southeast NC is I'm pretty sure that's not her.  Then after a scowl, a nose-in-the-air gesture, and a not so southern-hospitality head turn I get from 'Jeanie' I know for sure that's not her.

Embarrassed, I remember again that this happens to me all the time.  You?

I've called three different places home.  Pennsylvania. North Carolina.  And England.  And all too often I completely misplace people I see.  When I think I know a familiar face I ask myself, 'PA? NC? Or UK?'  Sometimes it gets pretty tricky.  Most of the time I end up feeling like a loser.  A few times I've made some friends and shared a coffee.

It's crazy how different people all over the world can share similar appearances.  It's even crazier that it's so hard for me to keep up with it all. I try to figure it all out but it's still a big mess in my head.  I do believe what they say about you having a look-alike in this big world.  It's a big cycle.  "The circle of life", if you will.  "And it moves us all".

And for sanity's sake, if someone's in the Warfordsburg, PA area will you swing by Southern Fulton High School and ask the school secretary if she's got a twin sister that lives down south?