A change of skin

I was really bored the other day so I decided to dress up as my friend Haariet. She was staying at her boyfriend's house and always leaves her door open so I borrowed a blonde wig from Abbie, knicked some of harriets clothes that were lying around her room. As I painted my eyebrows ginger and practised various 'Harrietisms' in my mirror, I sent her a text explaining that a woman was in her room who was claimed to be her but I wasn't convinced.
She got such a fright when she opened her bedroom door.

Harriet



My crude imitation


It was wierd standing in her bedroom, trying on her clothes in her room, I creeped myself out a bit over how much I got into it, I think I even put alittle bit of her purfume on so I'd smell like her (eeeuughhhh!)
It reminded me of this bit in a novel I read called 'the scapegoat' by Daphne Du Maurier, about a french teacher who one day meets a man who looks exactly like him, they get drunk together and he wakes up in the morning in a strange hotel room to find the man has gone, taking the other mans things with him and leaving his own, essentially swapping his identity. The man has no choice but to wear the other man's clothes out of the hotel, and as he is dressing he describes how strange it is to suddely become somebody else simply buy wearing their clothes. He has an uncontrollable urge to take the other man's brush and style his hair in the same way and wear a bit of his cologne. I got a similar feeling in Harriets room, obviously I don't look like her but it does make you think, how much of a person's personality is dictated by their possesions, can you replace or replicate them simply by dressing and looking like them, or immitating their characteristics.

I never liked shakespeare at school but this makes me want to read Hamlet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zEVZGuU3BU