It might be the sinus cold speaking, but lately I've been seeing people I know in places they aren't. I'll be sitting at my desk, writing ransom notes to people whose property I have stolen working diligently, and someone will walk by who looks JUST LIKE someone I used to know years and years ago. This is dangerous for a variety of reasons.
1. Sometimes you're tempted to leap to your feet and throw yourself upon said lookalike, only to realize that the person is NOT your long lost college roommate.
2. It can be tempting to treat lookalikes as you would treat the person they remind you of, and they're often totally different.
3. When you realize that you're accosting someone who isn't who you THINK they are, it can be really hard to explain how you could fail to realize that this unknown person is in fact about 6 inches shorter and ten pounds heavier than your acquaintance.

Sometimes someone will remind you of a person you used to have a huge crush on, and that can be REALLY embarassing, especially if you tend to blush and/or giggle. I have a lady friend who shall remain nameless who spends an innordinate time at her job flirting with one of the reps because he looks like Dane Cook. I won't give away her identity, but she lives in Parma and had a slip and slide at her last birthday party.

Sometimes this mistaken identity thing works in reverse. For example, last week I was having a nice dinner at Johnny Malloy's, a local bar within walking distance where the beer is cheap and the food is free during happy hour. It's a good place to go when I'm low on groceries and don't feel like driving to Lorain to shop at the cheap store. Bryan and I were discussing an older gentleman we used to look up to and who later turned out to be...there's really no nice way to say this...a huge douche bag. We were getting quite into the conversation and were laughing. "What would we ever do if he showed up here?" we wondered aloud. Ha ha, indeed. Bryan got up to go to the mens' room and guess who he saw, stragetically sitting in such a way that he could see us, but we couldn't see him? Bingo! The person we'd just been speaking ill of. See, we went into a situation assuming we'd never see this person again, and there he was. Too bad it wasn't a case of mistaken identity.

For the record, we did nothing. I flashed a big grin in his direction, finished my beer, and the person promptly sneaked out once he realized he'd been made. For months I'd been jumping out of my skin whenever I saw a man who resembled this person, and when I actually saw him in person it didn't even register.

I think sometimes the idea of someone can be more powerful than that person in the flesh. When someone isn't around and you imagine how an encounter will go you're only able to use the memory of past encounters to fill in the blanks of your imaginary conversations, and your brain provides the rest. When you actually see someone in person, you don't have the same sort of creative control and therefore you feel totally different.

Sometimes that feeling of being unprepared can be good, such as when you're scared and angry and you harness that into giving you the appearance of being someone who shouldn't be messed with. Sometimes it's bad, such as when your dad asks you why you're buying a five gallon bucket, duct tape and a lot of tubing and the only answer than you can blurt out is "I'm making a bong." I wasn't---I was making wine for Christmas gifts, and I know he didn't believe me about the bong thing because he told me I was going about making it all wrong. Plus the wine turned out way too sweet and strong enough to get you drunk on contact, so that was sort of a bad idea in general.

In conclusion, I think everyone should wear nametags, so that I can tell who the hell you are and so I don't go leaping into the arms of the wrong person, or laughingly joking about spiking tires in front of the RIGHT person, not that I would ever do that, because that would be illegal.