Earlier this evening, I heard the amazing news that a dear childhood friend is pregnant, and expecting twins. I am soooo beyond ecstatic for her. Back in the day, and ahh hell yeah I did go there, the two of us were like peas and carrots ourselves. We did everything together. We hung out all the time. We babysat together. We studied (but mostly not lol) together. We got drunk together. We got suspended from school together. We even lived together at one point. She was there with me, for me, through some pretty heavy shit, too. She is tattooed on so many of my adolescent memories. Words cannot describe how happy I am for her.
Part of that also stems from me being kinda partial toward spontaneous and natural human cloning. #2 and #3 are identical twins. Born merely four minutes apart, I can assure you that there are no other two individuals on this Earth that could possibly be so incomparable from one another. And that in and of itself is just phenomenal. Their personalities are that distinctive. #2 is obsessively organized while #3 is completely disarranged. #3 is very fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, and #2 plans everything accordingly. #2 loves the color blue, and #3? He digs red. #3 is right-handed. #2, a lefty.
They are also very similar to one another. When they were still in elementary school, we used to love April Fool's day. They'd swap classes and pose as each other, and laugh because no one else noticed. Physically, there are very few ways to differentiate the two unless you know them. As infants, I used to dress them differently in order for me to be able to tell them apart. One way to distinguish them is vocally. Another is that one of them was born with a birth mark on his hiney. Up until recently, it was very tricky for close relatives to know. And now? It's only because #2 decided to shear off his hair.
A couple of weeks ago, I took an unmarked photo and placed it on the fridge. In our house, the refrigerator is the steel equivalent to a photo album. What happens at Rach's house might stay at Rach's house, but it always ends up on Rach's fridge. A couple of days later, I thought that it might be a good idea to mark the picture, simply because it was one of the twins and if you don't identify who's who in that moment, you may never know. This has actually happened to me on more than one occasion. So I studied the photograph for a bit, took a red pen, and wrote #3's full name and cinematic age across the back of it.
But I was wrong. Literally moments after hearing the wonderful news of my friend's own expectancy, I completely and unexpectedly confused my own sons. What should have been a posting about the weather (seriously), immediately turned into the fuckery of misidentification that comes hand in hand with identicals.
#3 stormed into my office, holding up the photo of who was factually #2, and laughed his ass off. No, really. He had to grab hold of himself in an attempt to not fall down and physically roll on the floor. As for myself, I'm still sitting here, studying this pic, and completely thinking it's #3. I can't tell the difference.
Think it can't happen to you? Go ahead, have a set of twins. I DARE you!
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hehe that was funny
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