coulda been your twin.

"You know, we used to have a woman that worked here, her name was Tina, and she coulda been your twin sister."

"Really? Huh."

"She had a great personality, too."

I'm not feeling spunky enough to say, "Oh, well, I actually have a terrible personality," though I enjoy the joke to myself. See, by saying that I have a rotten personality, I'm making a good joke, which indicates that I, too, have a terrific personality. You see what I did there?

I don't have a twin sister, though I do have a sister-in-law named Tina. She doesn't look much like me, though I suppose as her marriage to my brother continues, she might be heading in that direction. Frankly, I have my doubts about how much this mythical Tina with the great personality looks like me. I actually get told that I look like someone quite a bit. It's annoying, because I never actually look like my supposed doppelgangers. Had I been feeling really snarky, I would have responded, "Oh, so you mean she has brown hair and wears glasses?"

I'd like to announce that there are a lot of females out there who have brown hair and wear glasses. I look like very few of them. I'm tired of being reduced to the two things that people notice first when they see someone. Maybe next time, I should ask, "Oh yeah? Did she have a mole right here on her neck? Does her nose do this ski jump thing? Was she tall with big feet? Well, I guess we're not related after all!" I want to tell these poor well-meaning strangers that I am more than brown hair and glasses.

Obviously, I'm just going to have to get over it. I'm not a particularly striking person. There is probably a Lego woman who fits my description. So people who don't look very closely might think I look like any other girl with brown hair and glasses. I'm sure this sort of thing happens to lots of people: red heads with big noses, blonds with unibrows, short, fat, bald guys. Looking at those groups, having brown hair and glasses doesn't seem so bad anymore.

I suppose the tiny silver lining of this story is that I'm totally set if I ever decide to rob a store.

"Sir, what did the assailant look like?"

"Well, uh. She had brown hair. And glasses. And uh, actually, you know what, she looked exactly like this girl I used to know. Coulda been her twin. Her name was Tina."