A fellow texted me, this morning, that my Janet and Archie were dead ringers for another couple he knows, Nancy and Gord. He was absolutely astounded, he said, by how alike the two couples were, and attached his photo of Nancy and Gord so I could see for myself.

"You’re not the only one who’s absolutely astounded," I replied. "It’s easy enough to believe that each individual has a double somewhere, but for a couple to have a double—that’s something else again. What are the chances? Very slim, to be sure. Very, very slim. And I’ve been thinking it would be a shame, if not a dereliction of common sense not to, in some way, capitalize on this rarest of rare occurrences.

"My first thought was, if they’d agree to it, I could organize a kind of Ripley’s-Believe-It-Or-Not cross-country tour of carnivals and fall fairs, bill them as the World’s Only Double Couple and charge admission to see them, maybe get Wrigley to sponsor us.

"But I decided this was too yesterday and, after further thought, I’m going to do this, instead—I’m going to create a website designed to help people—couples included—find their doubles. There’ve got to be tons of people who’ll want to do that—don’t you think? It’d be fun. I’ll maybe call the site Janarchie & Nanord and, on my home page, display side-be-side photos of Janet and Archie and Nancy and Gord.

"In a nutshell, here’s the plan—subscribers will submit photos of themselves, which I’ll add to an exponentially-expanding data base, where facial-identity algorithms will continually comb for matches and, daily, for all subscribers, display the closest doubles found so far. I’ll charge an annual subscription fee and, after things get rolling a bit, sell advertising space. Subscribers, I expect, will be continually checking back to see their closest-yet doubles—and other people’s, too, probably—so, traffic levels will be high and climbing rapidly. I’ll be able to charge top dollar for ad space. I see excellent potential for other revenue streams, as well. What do you think? Brilliant or what?"

He answered, "I think your idea is crazy one minute and brilliant the next. Whichever it is, I wish you luck. You were right to dump that first idea. It was too yesterday. And I’m pretty sure Nancy and Gord wouldn’t have gone along with it, anyway. Like your Janet and Archie, they enjoy traveling, so wouldn’t have minded that part of it. But I doubt the rest of it would have appealed to them.”

I doubt it would have appealed to Janet and Archie, either, and for similar reasons.

I’m wondering, when I’m ready to launch, if I should introduce Janarchie & Nanord to the world on Dragons Den, or whether Shark Tank would be the better choice. It’s like choosing between pots of gold.