Doppelgangers! It reads like a nasty venereal disease of some sort, right, or is it just me? A DG
is the exact double of another person who is not related to them. Today, I was in a Staples store
buying manila envelopes to mail books. While waiting for a random clerk to walk by, I glanced
at a man standing sideways to me in front of a nearby showcase, and it was Pat Patterson, the
ultra-veteran, Hall of Famer, pro wrestler! Wow, right?
There's a semi-serious snag in the sighting. Pat Patterson, the wrestler, passed away five years
ago—so why is he buying school supplies and not only not dead but looking pretty healthy? I
watched him talk with the employee behind the counter, with the potential DG continuously
sideways in my view. Left there alone when the employee stepped away, he still held a position
where I couldn't see his full face.
I sat ten to 12 feet away, in one of those barroom-type highchairs, which are much easier to rise
— actually, ease out of — than most modern chairs, made low enough for little people to have
their feet touch the floor.
Forget Pat for a moment, let's talk about the %*@#* chairs! It should be a crime against
humanity to have ANY type of chair without armrests to help a--let's say person--drag their
humongous fat ass out of a low fooking chair! I'm 83 and not always the oldest person in a room
waiting for one medical procedure or another. The chairs are all so low that even slender oldsters
sometimes have difficulty rising from them. A whale like me?
In another incident, I was sitting on a low chair in a room with mirrors on all sides. The low "trap"
was a metal folding chair, familiar to almost everyone. The only remotely, unspeakably horrible,
"good" thing was being alone in the room when I came under attack. I had been reading a book,
deliberately sitting in the part of the room with the fewest occupants, "Hello Claustrophobia."
Positioned with my back to everyone, I could use the mirror for recon without being too obvious.
I became engrossed in the book and looked up to find myself alone in the room. I also found that
I had to pee.
Book on the floor. Slide goatrooster, aka buttocks, to the very front edge of the seat, then reach
down and place my hands on the armrests. Um, excuse me, where the fook are the arm rests?
Myself: "You didn't notice they were invisible or missing when you sat down?" Himself: "Hey,
it's your fault! You forgot our knees lose all feeling after being bent for longer than fifteen
minutes; it's been thirty!" Ourself: "What the fook are we going to do?"
We got together and decided to figure out how to get ourselves vertical again. There is a crucial
codicil. The knee. There are things it should absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever,
unthinkable to the extreme, actual crimes against humana-knee, NEVER DO! I had been doing
all those things, plus a few I invented, to them, for varying lengths of time—six to seven days a
week—for 15 years. The interiors of both knees were so unhappy about it that they had a nervous
breakdown and took up stumbling and lurching as therapy.
Pain and stiffness missed the bus and maintained residence inside the knees. They got along just
fine... as long as the knee they occupied didn't make them do anything too radical, like, for
example, BEND! To actually place my weight, even much lighter now, directly on the knees, Mr.
Pain, who has not been sitting back and taking it easy like Mr. Stiff, but lurking there, doing
thousands of pushups and squats, running marathons, frothing like a ruptured fire hose... waiting
for me to dare even think about actually UNbending him after giving him so much time to
prepare! At the very least, he had to think, "Even this human who ruined my life can't be that
effing stupid!" Wakened by the doubled frothing of Mr. Pain, Mr. Stiff whined, "Why am I
drowning in slobber? What the h-e-double-l is going on?" Mr. Pain snorted several gallons of
gunk from each nostril and said, with ecstasy in every word, "The fat fooker sat there too long! I
'encouraged' Mr. Kidneys and Mr. Bladder to work a double shift, we're gonna own his arse any
second now. He's gotta get UP!"
Rigid in his aversion to any sort of motion, Mr. Stiff said, "I was having a great nap, dreaming
about the good ol' days when our human put that 330-pound guy on his shoulder and then
dropped all their combined weight to land on me! Twice! You were just a spectator; I was the
star. Why do you think Mr. Pain moved in with me first?" Slavering several bushels of drool, Mr.
Pain said, Quit yer bitchin' I'm livin' full time with you both, ain't I?" He went on, "I can prove
it right now! This human, 'Hawwkk, spurt', claims to be intelligent! What a hoot! He thinks we're
gonna let him get back on his feet! Quiet down, your hysterical laughing is distracting me!"
So, I can't slide out of the chair, turn, and kneel to then use the chair to push myself up. Every
effort has to come by pushing from the rear, from supports on both sides, or from pulling myself
up using something sturdy in front of me. After isolating myself upon entry, I would never allow
anyone to help me up... unless working a program/deception of some sort, usually for
amusement, which I wish all parties to enjoy. In this case, what I would or wouldn't allow anyone
to do was of no concern--I was all by my 'no armrest-lacking-chair-getting-up-by-myself'
lonesome.
Being at mirror central, there was no way to avoid watching myself contort, twist, writhe,
deform, gyrate, rotate, slither, and revolve as I tried to get out of that chair. I looked like someone
clearly OD’d on LSD, being prodded or poked by a cattle prod in ten different body parts at the
same time, while also being eaten alive by fire ants. Does this read like exaggeration? I had
revolved the chair several times, all the while facing mirrors. I was close to panic that
someone/anyone would enter the room with me in mid-contortion, assume stroke, heart attack,
epileptic seizure, terminal spazzology, all of the above, etc. Any decent person would
immediately re-open the door and scream for help at the top of their lungs, for someone to call
911 and tell them it was extremely urgent, some poor old man appeared to be only moments from
croakdom. Can you begin to feel my pressure now?
Dang it, I have to go. The photos I had downsized to fit inside my novel 'Death Match' to prevent damage during shipment are ready. I need to go pick them up and fulfill my promise to ship
purchased copies within 24 hours. I offered the first 50 customers a free autographed picture of
me, no biggie, I'm not Hulk or Ric. Even so, Hulk is gone, Ric retired, I'm still involved in the
biz--in a sense. I appreciate wrestling fans who supported me with their patronage during my
active career and still keep me company now in my golden years. I'll Dopple the Ganger
tomorrow/soon and tie up any other loose ends. Please visit me at BobRoop.com, you should
consider my welcome eternal. Warm regards, stay safe and well. Best from Bobā¤