“Are you guys twins?”
“No, we just look exactly the same, share similar clothing, sometimes talk at the exact same time (about 380 wpm (words per minute)), walk at the same rate, sound the same over the phone, look the same from behind…”
“So are you twins?”
Sounds ridiculous, right? This is actually a conversation I have on a pretty regular basis. Many of you reading this who know me will probably think that this is a personal jab. What you have to understand is that you are one among the hundreds of people that have asked my sister and I the exact same thing. “Are you guys twins?”
But it’s not just this question that I and every other twin in WJ have had to deal with since we were babies. It all started with being carted around by our mothers in those double-seated strollers at an age where no one knew if we were boys or girls. That’s a typical baby question your parents are faced with if they chose to dress you in unisex clothing, not knowing the post-traumatic stress that would result. But following this typical baby question comes another specifically for twins or triplets.
One question my own mother remembers is, “Do they eat and sleep at the same time?”
Really? We aren’t aliens or clones of one another. We can do things on our own, even as babies. Now that we’re older, questions have morphed to match our age. Do you like the same things? Are you applying to the same colleges? Do you want to go to the same state? Will you miss each other? We get asked these same questions time and time again and we even now have started dreading them, to be honest. We just find ourselves repeating the same answers over and over.
The answers to these questions differ for every set of twins or triplets. As far as my sister and I are concerned, we like some of the same things but we also have different interests. We’re our own unique people.
We also have names. We aren’t “The Twins.” We are two individual people who would like to be treated as such. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a twin. I get to double my wardrobe. But I’ve reached a point where I would like to be my own person and not be super-glued to someone else.
“Are you identical?”
“No, we’re fraternal.”
“Really, because you look exactly the same.”
“No, I was just kidding before. We’re actually identical.”
“Really?”
“NO.”
