No One Wants to Know What They Look Like Six Years From Now

If you could spy on yourself would you do it? Would you be brave enough to see yourself as others do? Would you want to look at yourself in 3D? Or even in 2D?

My foray into snooping on myself started one afternoon when I went through my old email box. Though I hadn’t looked there for maybe a year I was surprised to find that this other me was holding correspondence without me.

She was planning vacations, figuring out who to vote for, and was being invited to all kinds of fun (yet virtual) events. She was very busy and very in demand.

But then I got a notification from Facebook Messenger and actually saw her. She was staring back at me. Well, at least it sure looked like me. Except, it couldn’t be, could it?

A friend had sent a picture of a woman posing for a selfie that was making the rounds on Facebook. Someone had found the camera and wanted to find the owners. She said the post was old, but suggested the woman in the photo could be a relative of mine because of the resemblance. The more I looked at it, the more I wondered if it was this other me. The one from the other mailbox.

She sure tipped her head to the side the way I did. And the way she pursed her lips together in a sort of smug, but still bemused smile reminded me of my own grin in like photos. She even had a little dimple like me.

I zoomed in. Yes. She even had red hair. Though much longer than I had ever been able to achieve. Maybe she had been studying some of those beauty tips I had seen in the other inbox.

And who was that guy? He looked vaguely familiar, like someone I might have dated once before I met my husband. Perhaps she had responded to the other email I read from her “friend”, the dating coach for smart successful women.

After studying the picture for as many clues as possible, I closed the browser and forgot about my clone. A few days later, I saw her again in my feed. Another friend was helping this poor couple find their camera. This time I opened up the post and looked closer.

The post had been shared more than 21,000 times, but there were only 11 comments. In the fourth one, I saw that someone knew the man in the picture and had messaged him to return the camera. Mystery solved.

Then I noticed the date. 2012. So, this person wasn’t really alternate me. It was alternate me, six years ago. Which meant alternate me was six years older now.

How had her life turned out? Did the guy in the picture and her stay together? What did she look like now? Would I look the same in six years?

I could probably find out the same way I had found out about my doppelganger in the first place. I could post the picture on my Facebook wall, “I’m looking for these people who once lost their camera, but were found because of social media. I think I look like the person in the picture and want to see what I’ll look like in six years.”

But that would be crazy, right? Who wants to see what they look like when they are older? These people have been through enough. And I’ve done enough spying on alternate me.