It’s A Twin Thing

Being one half of a set of twins (yep, that’s us above. And yes, in clothes that look like they were intended for children half our age – Mum? Really? What was going on here? The jumper cuffs don’t even reach our wrists, and are our trousers REALLY tucked into our socks?! Oh, the shame…), people often ask, “What does it (being a twin) feel like? Is it strange? How do you feel about it?”

Hmmm. Well, if you really want to know: we have telepathic powers when in the same room, send messages to each other when apart via the secret ‘Twin Pigeon’ – the existence of which only real twins have any knowledge – and if you look really carefully, you’ll see our backs are actually blue, scaly and slimy. Our tongues are forked, too…

I’m kidding, silly!

(‘Twin Pigeon’. Honestly.)

Seriously, though: “How do I feel about it?” Is it me, or is that just a really odd question? I don’t think I have ever approached someone and said, “You have a sister? How do you feeeeel about that?”

That aside, I have decided to answer this question on my blog, for all you curious non-twin individuals to read.

‘Cos I’m nice like that 😉

So, being a twin. It’s pretty cool, I guess. We’re not identical, my twin is male, and I – as you know – am female. So we never actually had the opportunity to do the whole ‘freak people out’ thing. Which is a shame. I reckon that would have been really entertaining (for us, not so much our ‘victims’ – cue evil laugh). Imagine if my employer wasn’t aware I had an identical twin; we could have worked half the working week each 😉 (I realise this wouldn’t be a particularly viable option, what with two people living off one salary, etc, but oh, imagine the fun!)

The thing about being a twin is, you never feel like you’re alone in the world; no matter where you are, there is always the other ‘half’ of you somewhere. It’s pretty difficult to explain to someone who isn’t a twin (pretty crappy idea for a post then, Belle…), but together you’re a whole – apart, you’re a half.

Does that make sense? Nah, thought not

The same people who say to me, “I can’t imagine being a twin,” are the people I tell, “I can’t imagine NOT being a twin.” To wake up on your birthday as a child, and not be excited to rush into the other bedroom and say “Happy Birthday!” before your twin sibling can – or indeed as an adult, to beat each other to the birthday phone call; to not go through your first years of school in the same classes, copy each others homework, or share the feeling of freedom on the final day of school.
To me, that seems really, well, quite lonely.

Don’t get me wrong though, we had our spats – oh, did we just. And given I have three sisters (two older, one younger – our ‘baby’ of the family – spare a thought for my poor brother here, please; with his only siblings being four females, you can imagine who got/gets picked on the most) I found I spent more time with them than my brother, but that’s not to say we aren’t close. We are. But where I speak with my sisters on a daily basis, my brother and I can go weeks without a phone call, then pick right up where we left off.
There were also the moments of being referred to as ‘The Twins’, as though our individual names were no longer necessary: “’The Twins’ like that film”, “Would ‘The Twins’ like to come round our house?”, “Can you tell ‘The Twins’ that dinner is ready?”…
And the matching outfits! Oooh, the matching outfits… (and here come the flashbacks)

Looking at us, you’d never believe we are twins – we couldn’t look more opposite if we tried – I am a short-arse, he is 6 feet tall, I have blue eyes, he has…hmm… I’m not too sure what he has, actually (whoops!), but I know they aren’t blue!
He is caring, quiet and thoughtful; I am loud, excitable, and at times, a little brash.
But our similarities lie within our love for creativity (writing for me, art and design for him), our need to be the very best at everything we do, our desire to ensure everyone we love are as happy as possible, and our personalities – quite simply, we are both fun loving, energetic, craaaazy people 🙂

So yeah, being a twin. Not much different to having a brother or sister, really, but with that extra sprinkling of ‘special’.