I posted a pic of my BFF and I for the silly "siblings week" on Facebook. We have been mistaken for sisters a lot. Also, when I work with her brother (he is a director) people who know he has a sister assume I am the sister. Possibly because in addition to looking alike, we grump at each other a lot.

In college, my BFF, myself and another girl got mistaken for sisters a lot. Not only are we all exactly the same age, the other girl is Jamaican/Italian and we are German /Italian. This may have been because we seemed to be the only three people at my college with brown hair.

Vortex, that's an imaginary pizza! Party isn't until next weekend. And um, sure.

I've been mistaken for a lot of things. Mostly by natives in eastern europe for one of them. Quelle surprise, I'm of swedish, german and anglo-irish descent and there's a lot that moved about prior to that. I've got pretty generic northwestern/central european features. But the utter weirdest was someone who insisted I must have a recent eastern native american ancestor. I think that person might've been delusional, because no one I know, including me, can extrapolate that from my features. Individual was very insistent and I don't get it. And to be really honest, the possible wayback lines through which that were possible? Way too racist to claim a child legitimate of such.

When I was in high school, people often thought my sister and I were twins. We are six years apart. I still can hear her answer to someone who asked how many months apart we were, without hesitation: "72".

In France, most common guesses as to my nationality were Italian and Swedish. That's right, Swedish.

In short, people are stupid.

My SIL looks more related to my brother than I do. When the 3 of us are out with the kids, 75% of the time, I'm assumed to be his wife & mom to the kids, my SIL his sister. We all recoil and assert the real relationships when this happens.

When you look at my sister and I--our skin tones are different, our lips and noses and eyes are easily described differently in comparison to each other. It's just not the stuff anyone thinks to use when describing us the first time (except maybe my big lips).

There was a girl at university with the both of us who looked like both of us. It was quite freaky. We both got mistaken for her--my sister would actually play along. She was our midpoint.

Never actually met her. She played rugby. I always thought she seemed cool, but, really, how much of that was arrogance?

We ended up in the same cafe once. We both watched each other in the mirror the whole time.

In France, most common guesses as to my nationality were Italian and Swedish.

I suspect there's only one person in the world who's Italian/Swedish: Isabella Rossellini.

Could be worse.

I suspect there's only one person in the world who's Italian/Swedish: Isabella Rossellini.

Well, and her twin.

Okay, but that's it! Only those two. No other Swedes could possibly have produced children with Italians in the history of the world.

Europe confuses me, because isn;t Sweden closer to Italy than Maine to California? But no one looks "mainish" or "californish" except in dress.

Oooh, other interesting tidbits about the woman not on Ross's laminated card.

Rossellini was born in Rome, and raised there, as well as in Santa Marinella and Paris. At 13, she was diagnosed with scoliosis. In order to correct it, Isabella had to undergo an 18 month ordeal of painful stretchings, body casts, surgery on her spine using pieces of one of her shin bones (used to add supports for the individual vertebrae without risking foreign body rejection tissues), and a recovery from that surgery. Consequently, she has permanent incision scars on her back and shin.

At 19, she went to New York, where she attended Finch College while working as a translator, a ringmaster at circuses and a RAI television reporter. She also appeared intermittently on Roberto Benigni's Italian comedy show, The Other Sunday.