Staff Look-Alikes 2nd to Two of a Kind

The thing about fair contests is that they’re so democratic. Talent doesn’t always carry the day. Sometimes a willingness to make a slight fool of yourself will suffice.

Maybe you can’t bake a killer lemon pie, but you can certainly eat a few in the pie-eating contest. Maybe you don’t have perfect pitch like the Righteous or Neville brothers, but you can still sign up for the karaoke or hog-calling contests. Maybe you never got to play a cowboy in a movie, but what’s to stop a person from entering the cow chip tossing contest?

And maybe you’ve finally realized that even a great haircut isn’t going to cause people to mistake you for Princess Di. But you can still enter a look-alike contest if you look like someone in your office.

At first, my co-worker Katherine Woodson and I thought maybe we were the sole entrants in the “mixed pairs” category at the county fair’s Lookalike Contest.

A few mothers and daughters and fathers and sons sat, like us, in matching outfits on folding chairs at the outdoor Pepsi Pavilion, waiting for the contest to begin.

Fortunately, we weren’t being judged in those categories and, so far, no one else had signed up in ours. My eyes wandered over to the trophy table.

There were several of them--big ones--lined up in a row, waiting to be won.

If we had “mixed pairs” all to ourselves, even though it did sound like a cockapoo contest, well . . . someone had to win.

We’d entered the competition for a hoot. We work in the same building and people constantly tell us we look alike. My mother-in-law even mistook Katherine for me once. I didn’t really want to win, I told Katherine. Just for the fun of it, I said.

“Well, I want to win,” she said. None of this “for the fun of it” baloney for her.

We’d gone shopping Saturday morning--we both bought Belle Ash Blond #91 hair dye, and what we hoped would be judge-pleasing orange and white striped tops from the clearance rack at Ross Dress for Less. We already owned white slacks.

So there we sat, in our matching outfits and dyed hair, looking like carbon copies of Betty Boop’s mother. We knew we looked alike; three people in the audience had already asked us if we were sisters. We were swaggering a little in our folding chairs.

And with all those trophies glistening in the sun, another emotion began to take hold. I felt a small surge of adrenaline. I’d never won a trophy. I’d thought coveting such things was . . . immature.

Could that be what everyone who doesn’t win trophies says?

All at once I wanted one of those awards in the worst way. My thyroid began to pulse. I’d assumed it would take winning a bowling championship to snag one of those big, gold 30-inch-high dust catchers for my mantle.

My eyes wandered over to the sign-up table.

Uh-oh.

A line had formed. People were dressed alike. I eyed Katherine. She eyed me back. This spelled trouble. We had competition.

“We need some moves . . . an act,” Katherine hissed to me. “Yes, but what?” I hissed back. “Uh, can you do the Macarena?”

We attempted what we could remember, the first three gestures. It wasn’t the same without the music.

“What about, ‘I’m a Little Teapot?’ ”

“Yes. Let’s go for it.”

We dashed from our seats to a spot behind the cotton-candy stand and practiced the words with a couple of synchronized moves. We actually rehearsed the song and the moves three times before the contest began. Mixed pairs was the first category called.

We looked at one other and did that football huddle handshake thing they do. We put our game faces on. We were ready to rumble.

The first mixed-pair contestants called on stage by the emcee were Mark Gose, 8, and brother Brian, 7, from Camarillo. The second mixed pair called was Daisy Ibarra and Victoria Valdez from Oxnard, both 7.

Katherine and I locked eyes as it dawned on us that we were the only entrants in our category who’d finished grade school. I’ll tell you, it is difficult to be bloodthirsty when competing against second-graders. I think two were even kindergartners.

Our names were called. As we climbed the stairs, we whispered that maybe we’d cancel our “talent.”

We didn’t win a trophy, but we took second place behind the Gose brothers. It was gratifying. Next time, we might even compete against adults.

We each received a shiny red ribbon. Thank goodness we didn’t have to fight over who got to keep it the next day.

That would have been immature.