The Secret Life of Twins

by Clara Modlin

There are a lot of pairs of twins at B-CC.  I’m half of an identical one.  I know around five or six pairs.  As far as I know, there may be a group of triplets.

Now I know what you’re thinking.   You’re going to say, “You’re  a twin?  That’s so cool!  I suspected something, because I was like there’s no way she can change her clothes that fast!  Oh my gosh!  That is so cool!”

I’ve heard it a million times, and then some.  I’m sure that every pair of identical twins in this building have also heard it a million times.  I am equally sure that their version of the oh-my-goodess-you’re-a-twin speech is almost exactly the same as mine.  After this comes the questions.

“Who’s older?  By how much?  Can your parents tell you apart?  Are you best friends?  I bet people always mix you up, don’t they?  Do you ever wake up and think you’re your sister (I’ve actually gotten this one)?  Do you ever use your sister as a mirror (ditto)?”

And then the inevitable:

“How can I tell you apart?”

Let me tell you right now, before you stop reading and go away thinking “Wow, she sure is a sourhead.  If I were a twin…” that I love being a twin.  It’s really cool.  I have someone who knows me inside out, better than I do myself, to help me out, and I’ve got someone to back me up.  Being a twin, I gotta say, is one of the best things that have ever happened to me.

Nevertheless, one must face consequences when there is someone going around the school who, to the untrained eye, looks exactly like you.  I don’t mind when people come up to me and greet me with the wrong name.  Seriously, I don’t mind.  Yet people always, without exception, apologize for it.  Someone calls me the wrong name once a day, if not more.  I’ve started to respond to my sister’s name as well as my own.  It really annoys people when they try to guess my name when I respond to both.

I say all of this because in this new school, I don’t have many classes with my twin.  Sure, I see her around, at lunch, in a hallway, but I don’t actually talk to her.  As a result, many people don’t see us together.  Some people, indeed lots of people, think we’re the same person, and just change clothes all the time.  Some people guess that there are two of us, and some just don’t realize.

As a result, many more people than I am used to have been asking me whether or not I am a twin.  As a result, I have been pretty snappy with them.  I admit it.  But I realize now that we are not seen together almost at all.

The other day a girl came up to me.  “Here,” she said, “I have your pencil.”

I had never seen that girl in my life.  She didn’t look familiar, I didn’t think I had gone to primary school with her, and so I was racking my brains to see where she knew me from when it hit me.  She didn’t know me.  She knew my sister.

I smiled, and said thanks.