Friday, May 23, 2008

When It Rains, It Pours

I'm not exactly one for old adages, but this one seems to ring true.

Baby A and I can go weeks, or at least several days, without anyone talking to us about being twins. We still get a lot of looks, some double-takes for sure, but the days are gone where we got stopped by at least 2 strangers a day, asking "Are you twins??"

Or, so I thought.

Yesterday, we went to the post office for some work-related business. All three USPS employees were looking intently at us when we both walked in the door. (I think they had been observing us through the glass door, as we struggled to carrying extremely heavy and awkwardly shaped boxes towards the side door where they take large packages).

The woman at the right-most station (from our perspective) asked us the $64,000 question. And the man at the middle station commented about how we were the second pair of twins they had seen come into the post office that. I guess it never rains twins for singletons, it always pours as well. One of them, I don't remember which, made a comment about "Wow, you guys sure do look alike."

It was hot and windy, the boxes had been heavy, blah blah blah (we're full of excuses to consume more calories, nom nom nom), so we decided to walk across the street to the gas station's little snack mart thing and grab ourselves a drink to share.

As we were deciding the flavors (the horchata syrup was out, so we tried some pomegranate berry non-carbonated drink, and then settled on Squirt), I looked back at the two female cashiers who were looking at us and whispering. My first thought was "Oh great, we're going to get yelled at for tasting the pomegranate healthiness that didn't taste that great."

We walked up and I took out my card. The other cashier walked away to help another customer, and the one that is still there blurts out "You guys are twins, aren't you?"

I'm going to interrupt this story momentarily to tell you our twin policy. When we get stopped, we smile, we nod, we're very polite. We do NOT get cranky or short just because we've answered these questions before. Back to the regularly scheduled program...

The nice cashier, who called us "sweetie" and "honey," then proceeded to ask if we can think each other's thoughts or feel each other's feelings. I'll admit, there was a slight internal groan, but she was so nice about it and clearly excited to ask us questions. We smiled and looked at each other. I answered.

Baby B: "Well, a lot of the time, it's because I know her so well, I can just tell."

Nice cashier: (nods) "Right, right. That makes sense. Are your names similar?"

Baby B: "I'm A____ and she's A____."

Baby A: "They both start with 'A' and they have the same number of letters."

Nice cashier: (nods) "So there's an aura thing about you two. Kind of like a hippie thing."

Baby A & B: (laughs) "That makes a lot of sense. Our mom kind of planned it that way." (smile and exit)

Having the same genes and names that start with the same letter and have the same number of letters leads to having an aura thing? I'm not sure, but I know some people are really into numerology. It's not an accident that our first names have the same number of letters and our middle names match that way too. Mom didn't take it too seriously, but it still happened that way.

So the moral of the story is that twins, young and old, will never stop getting stopped. And we kind of like it that way.

TGIF,
Baby B

1 comment:

Heather said...

My favorite twin questions:

Can you read each other's minds?

If I hit you, will he feel it?

Are you identical?

We get the identical question when we are standing next to each other. HELLO he is a boy and I am a girl.