Home Sweet Home

One of the thoughts foremost on my mind is a concern about what will be different with my relationship with my parents when I go back home for break. This worry is based on the idea that everyone has doubles of themselves that exist in the minds of others because of how they express themselves and are therefore perceived differently by those around them. For example, my professors see me as a different person than my friends do, and my parents see me as a different person than both my professors and my friends. In high school, I definitely acted differently at home than I did at school. Here, I don’t ever have to use my “home persona”, if you will. Especially being so far from home, I feel as though I have changed a lot. I’m a little anxious to see how my relationship with my parents will be different now that I have become more independent and I am used to being able to make choices about what I do and when without having to consult anyone or let them know my plans. My parents still think of me as the person I was senior year of high school, and while I haven’t become a completely different person, I have changed in ways they have not seen, and therefore they do not perceive me as the person I see myself as now.

Credit without Credentials

My mom is the Senior Executive Assistant for the Deputy Chancellor of San Jacinto Community College in the Greater Houston area. It sounds like a fancy, super important title of someone who is extremely educated. I’m not saying that my mother isn’t intelligent and amazing at her job, because she is and she is known by those that work with her as someone who is very good at their job and always makes sure every small detail is covered, but she doesn’t have a college degree. She never attended college and never got her associate’s degree, much less a bachelor’s.

It is almost as though she has a talked of self that portrays a person who is college educated, while her unexpressed self knows that she does not have a degree. Many of her coworkers believe she has a degree even though she does not and are surprised when they find out she doesn’t. Many of the people throughout the college that she works and communicates with have doctorates or masters, and almost all of them have bachelor’s degrees. Because of this, she has to create a type of double of herself to appear as though she does have a degree in order to ensure that those who don’t know her or her work well still respect her for the quality of work she does and do not immediately judge her for her lack of degree in such a high position.

Valley of the Dolls

The town of Nagoro, Japan, commonly  is home to less than 40 people, but many more dolls. These dolls are created by Tsukimi Ayano, a woman born and raised in Nagoro, but she spent most of her adult life in Osaka. After moving back to Nagoro her father passed away and as a type of memorial for him she created a doll in his likeness. As Nagoro’s population declined due to death and relocation, Ayano created dolls modelled after the residents that had passed or left, and even poses them in activities the residents regularly did.

Today there are over 350 of these dolls that represent doubles of the residents. These dolls are created to look like specific residents and are posed to look as if they are just a snapshot in time of the residents going about their daily life. These doubles go to school, sit on benches waiting for the bus, “work” the fields, are clothed and accessorized, and are even conversed with by the living residents. On one hand, this can be seen as a gracious, beautiful memorial to those who passed, but on the other hand it can be likened to the horror movie theme of dolls taking over and replacing the lives of living people.

Seeing Doppelgangers in a World of Uncertainty

               As I walk to class, out of the corner of my eye I see one of my best friends from high school. I see the girl that sat on the opposite of the room from me during math class, the boy that sat at the table next to me during lunch, or the friend of a friend that I waved at in the hallway between class. At least, I think I did. Right before I get excited and want to run up and say, “Hey! What are you doing here?” I remember we’re not in Kansas anymore.

               I am from a suburban area between Houston and Galveston, Texas. I was raised in the same house my parents took me home to after I was released from the hospital when I was born and the only time I changed schools was to go to intermediate school and then high school. I saw the same people day in and day out. I had friends I’d met the year before and friends I’d known since pre-K. There was only one other person from my high school that came to OU, and as far as I know, only one other person besides us from our district came here. With all of my friends hours I away, I definitely wasn’t recognizing anyone from home.  

               For the first week or so I was here, I thought I recognized at least 2 or 3 people a day from my high school. Since then, that number has tapered off until I haven’t mistakenly recognized someone in at least 2 weeks. My hypothesis is this: the shock of moving so far away from everyone I know for the first time in my life caused my brain to see people that looked somewhat familiar as people I knew. I believe that this was a type of coping mechanism for being in a completely new environment with strangers. My brain saw doppelgangers of my friends in the people I saw around campus as a way to find familiarity and comfort in a strange place.