I beckon Dan through the crowded party to meet an adorable engaged couple I’m getting to know. After greetings and discussion of how many in the crowd are related to us, the young man stares incredulously, “Wow, that guy right there could be your twin!”
“That’s because he is!” Dan explains with a laugh.
There is something surprising about seeing twins, but to spot them at age 62 is especially strange. I have a pair of identical twins in my family, distant cousins on my father’s side. They fascinated me growing-up. I loved hearing their mom explain how she painted one of their big toe-nails with red polish to tell them apart as infants. Despite my studious attempts to memorize their differences, I was never sure if I was talking to Randy or Andy. Twins get dressed alike, ride the same school bus, play together on the sports teams; we are used to seeing them together and think of them as a unit. Then most adult twins go their separate ways.
Once Dan and Chris went to college, they branched away from keeping their womb-mates as roommates. Before they started dating, my sister-in-law didn’t know the young man who was being so nice to her had a twin. Sometimes the guy flirted with her and others he would hardly give her the time of day. She grew very confused. Had Chris known what was happening, he could have blamed this on his evil twin. How do they deal with the psychology of having people think there are two of them? Dan used to tell people, “I’m the good-looking one,” and since their birthday is Halloween, “Chris was the trick and I was the treat.” Sound like evil twin talk to me!
At birth Dan and Chris were thought to be fraternal twins since there were two placentas, thus nonidentical, and yet to this day not many people can tell them apart. Luckily, my husband’s brother keeps a beard and my man usually shaves, so I teach new people, “A. B. C. –if you see A Beard its Chris.” I recently asked Harvey Kliman, of the Yale University School of Medicine, Reproductive and Placenta Research Unit how these two-placenta twins could be so alike. “It is likely if they look very identical that they are identical twins.” He showed me the pathway by which this probably occurred. Fascinating!
In the end, being married to a twin has given me a few advantages, like catching plot twists in “The Prestige” and “The Man in the Iron Mask.” But there aren’t two of him, despite my “honey-do lists” being long enough for triplets. Even though he grew up as one half of “the boys,” he is as unique and individual as the rest of us non-twins, despite the fact that he shares almost all of his genetic material with someone else. . . lives next door to him. . . sometimes dresses the same. . . works with him every day. . . In the end, how different are we all, really?
Think about this: How might your life be different if you were born an identical twin? If you are a twin, how might it be different if you weren’t?
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