Sunday, October the 26th, 2008
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Bobsleigh and curling were the great enthusiasms of the winter sports enthusiast. His enthusiasm was that of a spectator rather than a participant, his body being too gangly and chaotic for him to accomplish even the simplest athletic technique with any measure of success. As a youth, he had fancied himself as the sort of person who could throw himself off a high diving board and perform breathtaking pirouettes before plunging, straight as an arrow, into the municipal swimming pool, but his efforts were laughable. After dozens of attempts, he saw sense, slinking away from the pool and indeed away from the town, heading north until he reached snow and ice, where he felt at home, and where winter sports were engaged in all year round, and he became a fan of bobsleigh and curling, and he bought a pair of sunglasses and a season ticket to events.
It was in a stadium watching a curling quarter-final that the enthusiast met the dimwit. The dimwit was an important figure in this cold country, having risen, as so many dimwits do, to civic office. He had his own box in the stadium, as he had boxes in all the stadia thereabouts, for though he knew nothing of the rules and drama of curling or of any other sport, winter or otherwise, the dimwit liked to be seen out and about, being important, a golden chain of office slung around his neck, and a cap upon his head.
The enthusiast and the dimwit bumped into each other as they both made for the automated snack dispenser in the lobby of the stadium. The enthusiast recognised the dimwit, for the latter's photograph was regularly published in newspapers and magazines and propaganda sheets, and he often appeared on television, against a backdrop of ice-girt palaces and official buildings.
“Gosh!” said the winter sports enthusiast, “You are Bogdan Vingo, the minister of broad sweeping policy pronouncements!”
“I am indeed, little gangly chaotic person,” replied the dimwit, buffing his chain with the cuff of his coat.
And so began a surprising friendship that was to last as long as they both lived, for the winter sports enthusiast and the dimwit discovered they had much in common, not least that, in a certain light, they could be taken for twins. They were not twins, of course, but the resemblance was close enough to disconcert the visually impaired citizens of that freezing land, and both used it to their advantage, in advancing their separate schemes and plots.
If you were to chance upon your Doppelgänger, you might wish it wasn't a dimwit, but needs must when the devil drives. And the devil did drive the winter sports enthusiast, for as he realised the opportunities for mischief and shenanigans afforded by his striking likeness to the dimwit, he dug himself ever deeper into a pit of moral turpitude, and by the time he was racked by remorse and wished to clamber out of it, it was far too late.
Source : The Dimwit Doppelgänger & Other Cautionary Anecdotes From The Freezing Cold Country In The North by Pebblehead.