How do Octopi Tell Each Other Apart?

Something funny struck me today as I was standing outside my office building. I was enjoying a small respite from work, busy puffing ten minutes off my life, and I happened to notice a gentleman walk by with a pink mohawk. Pink.

Now you might normally find this a strange sight, and I would have agreed with you were I still living in Wisconsin, but just yesterday I witnessed another man proudly sporting a pink mohawk… different man, same haircut. Pink.

A couple of weeks ago, Ariana and I walked by the cutest little poodle in Union Square with…wait for it...a pink mohawk.

And I suddenly realized as the most recent pink-headed man passed my way: We all like to think we are unique, but this simply isn’t possible. There are something like 6 billion people in this world, and not nearly that many haircuts. Some of us are going to have to share.

But this phenomenon isn’t confined simply to style, there are a great many of us who look alike as well. While on the bus home from the airport, I could have sworn I was watching my good friend Mark Gapen talk on a cell phone. He was sitting right across the aisle from me, and although I knew it wasn’t him, I had to do a double take. Same lips, same face structure, even the same style of speech…it was freaking eerie.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Ariana asserts that there’s a guy who looks just like me in one of her classes. Thank God I got to her first! It’s a strange feeling to know you have a doppelganger lurking about, especially when he or she lives in the same city as you. We aren’t supposed to get that close – we might disrupt the continuum of the universe.

Yet all this does not mean we are incapable of standing out, the mere fact that identical twins can have two separate personalities is a testament to our individuality. We simply have to guard ourselves against our own egos, we have to stand out by something other than our image – otherwise we end up with pink mohawks.