Tag: DavidNash

There is another me out there. He made different choices. And I suspect he’s much happier, and definitely more successful. He grew up in the town on the other side of the ridge. Different valleys, different schools, different choices. We both know that high school determines so many things – whether you get into AP courses or make varsity or go to homecoming with Lindsey instead of Lisa. He didn’t do those things or they weren’t important or he didn’t let them define him. That’s it. He didn’t let success define him. He didn’t keep chasing it like a high.

I know this because I’ve always had this sense that I had a twin. Our lives are being conducted like an experiment. Like A-B testing. I get emails with test results and spam texts late at night asking me to opt-in to another round. Like a rejection letter, I never respond, but the trials go on.

I know he has read more books and written more letters to his favorite authors instead of writing to the newspaper to complain about their biased high school sports coverage. He found out earlier that some things are more important than attention. He wanted it too, attention, but handled it differently. When he walked into the library, the librarian turned around to get his books from the hold shelf. That happens to me now in my little town library, but it would have been better to have happened twenty years ago.

It’s not that I want to go back and live my life like his, I wouldn’t be the person I am now, but it would be nice to trade places with my twin for a day each year. Maybe on Groundhog Day we could trade places and get to live the same day over. I know that’s not how it works, not even in the movie.

I know he’s not living in my little town where on a clear day from the top of the big hill, you can see the Freedom Tower and skyline stretching up to midtown and the Empire State Building. He doesn’t have that view because he’s living in it, maybe in a loft in SoHo or Central Park South with a doorman. He’s like a fish in water, everything that he’s gained and consumed – it’s his nature now. He doesn’t have kids because he kept moving in his work. His work is work, not a job like selling timeshares or a career like an accountant – it’s something else like writing.

For a long time, I blamed my college decision on my twenties’ limbo. I treated high school like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory like I lived with grandparents who couldn’t get out of bed and college like the golden ticket. But then I chased the bubbly high of some madman’s delusion and the ticket slipped through my hands and into a turbine. Later I would blame my kids. I know I should accept responsibility. But I know too that one day when I go to the city at my boring job-job I’ll bump into him in the crosswalk, my twin, and it will surpass all the bad decisions and setbacks and blame.