What Would You Do With A Body Double?

NatashaNacho — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:59:39 -0500

Recently, I asked folks at CreativeNachos.com what they would do if they had a carbon copy of themselves or “double” that would do whatever they didn’t want to do. Personally, I’d have mine do everything from clean the bathroom and change my daughter’s more fragrant poop diapers to look exceptionally interested when attending snooze-fest meetings and remain calm while standing behind the one person in the grocery store line using a check to pay for a packet of gum because they no longer believe in cash and want to know who can trust debit cards, really?

My thought was that having someone around to do all the things I don’t want to do would leave me with time to do things that make me feel alive and be with people I love. Yet, I didn’t think too far beyond that sentence. One woman’s reply started me thinking. What are those things I’d want to do?

1. Make a yummy dessert or two. I’m no culinary wizard some might even accuse me of burning water. Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of making dinner and if I don’t do it well, others might be tempted to do it instead. Thanks chef husband o’ mine. But decadent chocolate desserts are a whole other story. Chocolat the movie was inspiration enough for me to try to find a cure for everything in chocolate. I’m happy to sacrifice myself by making and testing desserts and, with a double I’d have more time to do it.

2. Create giant, mural paintings of butterflies and fireflies with my daughter using only our feet. She is still just a little thing but as we begin to color together and I see those small swirls and jagged lines of hers come to life, my dreams of our creations grow bigger.

3. Spend more time on my hobbies like becoming a Champion Water Skier – are there even water skiing competitions? Despite the fact that I’ve only been water skiing twice and that I wrecked my knee the last time I went skiing in the winter, I still think I would be good enough to become a champion. And if not, perhaps I’ll work on becoming a world famous surfer. Honestly, I don’t see that fact that I’ve never surfed as an obstacle.

4. Start a food fight - using desserts. (Is anyone else noticing a pattern here?) I was involved in a food fight in Third Grade and aside from mashed potatoes in my hair and getting hit with the school meatloaf which was like being hit with a brick, it was a riot. Maybe I’m secretly looking to regress for a moment in time; is that so wrong? Nah, I didn’t think so. (Oh and the abovementioned double would happily clean it all up.)

5. Take a sailboat dinner cruise with my husband. We’d finally have the time and energy to talk and laugh till the wee house like we did when we first started dating. Well, when we weren’t fogging up the windows in his old, beat-up car.

6. Talk politics and religion over dinner. How often have you heard, “Politics and religion don’t mix, especially in polite conversation”? My extended family ended many a holiday in knock down, drag out political arguments, yet I still have some fascination with inviting political and religious opposites to dinner and innocently mentioning something about the current state of the world, just to see what would happen. It intrigues me the same way being told not to eat Pop Rocks and drink soda because my head would explode did as a kid. However, I’ve never been brave enough to test that one out.

7. Have a family bowling competition featuring me, my brother and our parents. Bowling has never been a family event. I don’t even know if my brother and I would win. I think it just harbor some secret desire to see my parents clomp around in those clown shoes.

8. Spend more time in the mirror saying things like, “You’re amazing. You can be President”(although I think I’d need a lot of time to plan a serious strategy to penetrate that old, thick cloud of boys on Capital Hill. Good thing, I have a double) as opposed to “Nice caboose, toot, toot,” and “My, those thighs have been hungry. Good thing you’ve been feeding them!”

9. Take a mini-vacation or overnight retreat with my closest friends, drink champagne and do nothing but laugh and share like we did when we were kids.

10. Fight harder for women’s causes rather than just donate. I just read Suzanne Reisman’s, Porny Ads Exploit Brazilian Women to Sell “Exotic” Drink post and decided that I want more time to read and speak out on the way women are portrayed in our society.

As I composed this list, I realized that it was more than a simple catalog of what I would like more of; it’s a list of hopes for the future. While some may seem a little more far-fetched, like becoming a water skiing champion, than others, like making murals with my daughter, this exercise taught me more about who I am and what inspires me. It showed me that I want a little more playtime in my life. And while I don’t have that “double” I do have the ability to let some things wait for a moment while the other things like my family and friends take center stage. Life may get a little messy and things may not be handled right away but at least I’ll be having fun making memories.

What would you do?

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What Would You Do With A Body Double?