One Little Old Man Gifted Me A Miracle And Didn’t Even Know It

Here’s what I never knew. Every one of us defies the odds every day and knowing that changed everything.

We’re sitting at Tim Horton’s Café, me and Heather, talking about a book she liked and I hated when she stops in the middle of a sentence.

She’s staring over my shoulder. Oh, she says. Oh!

Oh, Linda, she says and her hands fly to her mouth, her eyes all wide. She’s facing the door so I swivel to look. I freeze, mouth open.

Slowly I turn back to her. I feel like I’m in slow motion. I am stricken. Just utterly stricken and my eyes fill up. We don’t say a word, just turn our heads and watch as a little old man orders coffee with two cream, two sugar. He makes a joke, laughing with the cashier.

I want to yell hey Dad, fancy meeting you here.

I want to run hug him. But I don’t.

It’s not my dad. I know because I wept at his funeral. Threw dirt on his grave and collapsed into my brother’s arms out at the old cemetery where his father, mother and brothers waited for him for so long.

This man? He didn’t just look a little bit like my dad. He was the spitting image of my dad. Could have been his twin. A doppelgänger.

If my dad had not crossed the bridge to forever, I’d have called out, truly thinking it was him. That’s how much he looked like my Dad.

And get this. If his face and build weren’t enough, he was dressed straight out of Dad’s closet. Same black fleece jacket. Same black dress pants and polished shoes. White shirt, top button open. With a ball cap, yet.

Let me tell you a funny story.

At the very end of dad’s life, he was in the early stages of dementia. Mostly lucid, but there were moments. Oh, there were moments.

I’d been telling him about a program that matches seniors with young friends so they have companionship that isn’t their own kid when Heather came for coffee one day. We’re sitting and laughing when he joins us.

So we chat, the three of us, talking and laughing. Finally, he gives me an exasperated look. I’m glad you like my new friend, he says, but you don’t need to supervise us. I’m sure you have things to do.

I look at Heather and stifle a laugh. I open my mouth to explain when she shakes her head no and winks.

So she spends the afternoon with him and hugs him when she has to leave to pick up her daughter. Come back soon, dear, he tells her and she promises she will, but he’s gone before her next visit.

She’s as shook as I am. So we clear our table, put the cups and trays on the shelf and leave not long after he does.

Months later, I’m working at my computer when my phone buzzes. I look. The text is two words.

Mom? Look…

I see the spinning icon that means a photo is coming in so I wait. And there he is again. In the grocery store two blocks away. It took my breath away all over again. Another message below it.

I know it’s not grandpa, but…

I know, I text back. I know. My eyes fill up again.

What are the odds of any one man being the spitting image of my father, not just a little bit but enough to fool his child and his grandchild.

I can tell you that.

Because I looked it up.

According to scientists who calculated the odds, the chance of any one person looking exactly like another person across eight different facial features are one in a trillion.

Not for twins, of course. But random strangers? One in a trillion odds.

Do you know how big a trillion is?

It’s a number that’s too big to wrap our heads around.

A million millions. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. Here’s what some financial guy said. If you started spending a million dollars every day at the point in time when they say Jesus was born, you still would not have finished spending a trillion dollars today. It’s that big.

Those are the odds of that man existing.

One in a trillion. Yet there he was.

Shakespeare wrote “there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

It’s one of his most popular quotes.

Know what it means? Horatio is a scientist and scholar. Hamlet is saying there are things science can’t explain, my friend.

It’s dead true. Like ball lightning and spontaneous combustion. Scientists can’t explain those. And hummingbirds, who “scientifically” should not be able to fly but they do. Not just forwards, but backwards.

They’re the only species of bird that can fly backwards. Scientists don’t understand it. At all.

That, and one little old man who, despite one in a trillion odds, is the spitting image of my father.

Here’s the kicker. It’s not just him.

Canadians, man. So many wildly creative people from this crazy place where it’s mostly uninhabitable. Like Canadian artist, François Brunelle, who started a photo project to find strangers who look alike.

Doppelgängers. And find them, he did.

They don’t share blood, and most of them grew up in different parts of the world. Most often, their ancestors come from different countries and yet they match as many facial points as twins. It defies explanation.

The photo project went wild. It inspired spin-off sites where people could upload their face and find their doppelgänger.

The project grew so big it attracted the attention of scientists.

Here’s what they said.

Given the 1 in a trillion odds of two unrelated strangers matching on 8 or more facial points, we’d need a global population of 150 billion people for everyone to have one single doppelgänger.

There are 7.4 billion people in the world. And yet? Research shows that everyone has at least one doppelganger, and six is more likely.

Six people out there, somewhere, look exactly like you.

Six people out there, somewhere, look exactly like me.

It defies the odds. That’s what scientists say.

And they can’t explain it. They don’t know why. Not anymore than they can explain spontaneous combustion or hummingbirds or dozens of other things that science simply can not explain.

Long before Einstein became famous for E = mc², he wrote an essay that he called The World As I See it.

He said the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.

It’s the fundamental emotion at the cradle of true art and science. Anyone who can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, he said, his eyes are dimmed.

Sometimes, you run down a rabbit hole and get lost. But other times? You run down a rabbit hole and find yourself.

One little old man gifted me a miracle and he didn’t even know it. He was just going about his day but he changed how I look at the world.

Odds don’t matter. Not in the face of the unknown.

You tell me I can’t do something because the odds aren’t in my favor?

I don’t care what the odds are. Every one of us defies the odds every day. Just by existing. And somehow, that changes everything.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.” ― Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions