Variant(s): or dop·pel·gang·er /'dä-p&l-"ga[ng]-&r, -"ge[ng]-, "dä-p&l-'/
Function: noun
Etymology: German Doppelgänger, from doppel- double + -gänger goer
1 : a ghostly counterpart of a living person
2 a : DOUBLE 2a b : ALTER EGO b c : a person who has the same name as another
[ from Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary]
Mornings like this in August I would go to my job at the swimming pool quite early to get the laborious tasks done early before the heat became suffocating. I had bathhouses to clean and sanitize and the filter system to run through its regular maintenance. If the lawn needed attention I would do that and rake the clippings off and sweep the flagstones so the debris would not get into the pool.
Up the bank behind the pool another person was doing early maintenance on the clay tennis courts-- a guy from my class at school who swept, sprinkled down and rolled the courts, applied straight white lines to the surface, drew the nets up taut and spruced up the shady sitting area where players sat to wait their turns. During the school months, he and I had walked part of the way home from school together when his sports and after-school job permitted it; we had passed shyness and were comfortable walking and talking.
Often, on drizzly days when the tennis courts were too wet to walk on and swimmers were not coming to the pool, we would sit and talk together, he and I. There was a small benched area perched between tennis court above and pool below where we could monitor our areas of responsibility and still talk on and on about books and ideas and plans and science and aviation. There was so much to talk about we never got finished-- ever! It was Plato and Aristotle and it was energy and mass, and it was poetry and music, and it was space and time, infinity and eternity, human origins and the afterlife. Also food, parents, cars, airplanes, language (especially puns), bugs, clouds, water.
This guy was medium tall and slim with a head of dark hair and heavy lidded dark eyes that drooped a bit at the corners. His voice was soft and he thought before he spoke. His mouth was a little crooked, especially when he laughed from time to time. And the most fascinating thing about him was that he could pull the words out of my mouth just before I was going to say them! It was as if we were both being fed from the same pipe-line of curiosity and discovery.
It was uncanny and almost dizzying to spend time with him -- and the hours of summer stretched long while we happily spilled our minds to each other. We found time to walk sometimes around the wooded trails and poke around the historic buildings and the little creeks and bridges in our neighborhood.
"Don't forget the canoe trip. Or the puppet show at that house with all the children and the St. Bernard. You didn't mention that I took you the look out tower on the Courthouse where we reported air traffic to the Civil Defense people. And you forgot your first and only tennis lesson."
"Well, those, and some others as well, are all little stories within the big story, aren't they?"
I did not dare to let the friendship move on into boyfriend-girlfriend status -- it was so uncannily strong and compelling just the way it was.
----Epilogue-----
This person and I are still joined-at-the-hip. I am nearly seventy and so is he. (We were born within eight days of each other.) We often talk about the beginnings of our relationship as we go through our days together, and we are still amazed as we pounce on the same idea at the same time even today. We still talk too much-- or is it just enough? And we laugh a lot. And make puns and sing old songs and walk in the woods. In many ways it is just the same as it ever was -- the comfortable burbling of a creek that began so long ago and still runs along. The days of August move more quickly now.
"You don't have to mention that.."
There are two chairs in the glade behind our house. We sit there and look at the sky. We try to identify the bird songs. This is good.
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