Tuesday, April 08, 2008

What's So Special About Twins?

Does anyone else wish they'd been born a twin? My mom is a twin (that's her and my aunt in the picture...my mom is the one on the right...I think). But I'm a singleton, all my sisters are singletons, and all of our children have been singletons...so far.

I used to think it would be great to have twins (two for the price of one pregnancy, labor and delivery). But as I've ushered my children through the milestones of kindergarten, speech therapy, fencing lessons and college...um, I've rethought that a bit.

In my latest project, my characters are twins and I'm having fun with the secret twinnication that is part of the twin mythos. I, personally, don't believe it is myth. You wouldn't either if you your mother was a twin and you saw how she communicated with her sister without words but with spooky accuracy (and I'm not counting the pig latin they used to use around us).

Twins can be fraternal (DNA of typical singleton brothers and sisters) or identical (same DNA). If I were a twin, I'd like to be identical. Although maybe it would be freaky to watch yourself walk, talk, eat, and wear something you'd *never* be caught dead in. My sisters and cousins and I are divided as to whether our mothers are identical or fraternal. They look quite alike in their younger pictures, but they have traveled different fashion paths and no longer could play the switch game they used to try in high school.

Would you want to be a twin? Fraternal or identical? Well, if you weren't born one, you can do second best like me, and write a pair of twins into a book!

Kelly

9 comments:

Wendy Toliver said...

At my university, there was a pair of twins who were on the Doublemint commercial. LOL!

Steph said...

HAHAHAHAHA, ah twins. I like a guy who's a twin, and I think his twin likes me, so it's a very twisted love triangle. I should write about it :)

Erin Downing said...

I have 7 month old boy/girl twins...it's rough! They do not run in my family, so it was a big, fat surprise.

Kelly McClymer said...

Ah Erin,

I watch that cable show "Jon and Kate Plus Eight" (the couple had twins, then tried for one more and got six!). Maybe if you watch one or two of those shows, you'll feel a little less overwhelmed?

The good thing about twins is they are built in playmates for each other (the bad thing is when they get on each other's nerves, they get on everyone's nerves...even when they're 70 and should know better :-)

The twins that were well known around my kids were the Olsen twins . Talk about inferiority complex. How many kids were heads of multimillion dollar businesses by the time they hit double digits?
Kelly

Jennifer Echols said...

My husband and I watch Jon and Kate Plus Eight in fascinated horror because Jon looks like him, Kate looks like me, and their arguments sound like our arguments--and we have only one child! Erin, I empathize!

Anonymous said...

I am a fraternal twin. It's not to exsiting. I think it would be way better to be idenical. The good thing about being a twin is you can like talk to somone the same age as you and all, but it always seems like a competition between you and your twin. My grandma was a twin and my brothers are twins and they all agree.
-Caitlyn

Ms. Yingling said...

Have you ever read the Rosamund du Jardin books about Pam and Penny Howard? Start with Double Date. Fun, vintage stuff!

Micol Ostow said...

Twins are a constant source of fascination. The Wakefields, anyone?

Anonymous said...

Blech, the Wakefields. I always hated those 'twin' characterizations in books, especially the creepy thriller ones. I actually am a twin and I have yet to read anything even remotely resembling an actual twin relationship in the books I've read. Most authors assume that twins either hate each other and are completely different or are obsessed with each other and do all the same things. Um, not true.