I walked Z to school again this morning (the weather is astonishingly beautiful) and noticed a middle-aged woman standing next to the school doors who looked exactly like my senior producer at work. Same hair. Same face. Same body. Same glasses. Even her posture was the same. I tried to catch her eye, but she looked right through me.
That's strange, I thought. I knew my production manager, Jean, lived in Oak Park, but this woman clearly was working at the school and Jean couldn't possibly hold down two simultaneous jobs. "Who's that lady in the black vest?" I asked Z.
"Ms. S-," she replied.
I was puzzled, but so intrigued I snapped a picture with my phone. Two hours later I was in a meeting with Jean and I asked her "Do you have an identical twin who works at Lincoln Elementary?"
And indeed she does. One of the dozen people on my team at work has an identical twin sister who teaches at my daughter's school, in the classroom right next to hers. I passed my phone around the conference room and everyone agreed it looked just like our colleague.
According to Jean, she frequently gets stopped on the streets of Oak Park by parents who think she's her twin sister Joan.
It's a small, small world.
