More Mirror Twins by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I recently saw a YouTube video about the Olsen twins. Nice video, but the guy who did it clearly doesn’t know much about twins.

You see, this guy insisted that they were NOT identical, because 1) they are not exactly the same height, and 2) because one of the two is a lefty!

Newsflash!

Identical twins can be as much as one whole inch different in height. And guess how far apart they are. 😊 And, as we’ve stated several times on this blog, mirror twins are often determined because one is a lefty.

In other words, Mary-Kate and Ashely Olsen are MIRROR TWINS!

Now for those of you who don’t know (including the guy who did the video I saw), all mirror twins are identical, but not all identical twins are mirror twins.

Additionally, fraternal twins can not be mirror twins because fraternal twins are no more alike than any two offspring of the same parents are. Fraternal twins occur when two ova are released at the same time, and both get fertilized.

Identical twins happen when the already fertilized egg splits in two. And sometimes, they produce babies that are mirror opposites of each other. Hence the name mirror twins.

And I know about that one-inch difference part because I looked it up while I was still in high school. It upset me to no end that Konnie and I weren’t identical because I am an inch and a quarter taller than her, then Konnie reminded me she lost height when she injured her back when we were eight.

Just to recap, this past week I learned that the Olsen twins, who I have watched grow up since the very first episode of Full House. Please note, we are talking Full House, not Fuller House.

First, I don’t have cable, and second, I am that old.

I, in fact, remember being certain that while the credits that the first season listed her as being Mary-Kate Ashely Olsen, I was positive that there should be an “And” somewhere in there. Mostly because I knew that Hollywood tended to use twins for their youngest characters, hence Sidney and Lindsay Greenbush played Carrie Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie from infancy until they were about six or seven when they switched to just using one of them. Sorry, I forget which one, but I do know they did at first use both of them. I remember when they changed the credits to just one of them playing the part.

Yeah, I keep dating myself.

At any rate, well before Full House aired, I knew that Hollywood tended to use twins for infant characters, so I was positive that the baby on Full House was actually twins.

When they finally added that little “and” between Kate and Ashely, it just confirmed what I knew all along.

I watched a bunch of their movies too.

And I still wonder why they didn’t use the Olsen twins when they did the remake of Parent Trap.

Yeah, I know they didn’t use twins for the roles in the original version, but why didn’t they use twins for the remake?

Though it was probably because of some Hollywood red tape or something, like when they hadn’t been able to get Shirley Temple to play Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz all those decades ago and ended up using an actress who was considerably older than Dorothy was supposed to be. The studio doing the filming had Judy Garland under contract but not Shirley Temple.

I just find it strange to find out all these years later that the Olsen twins are as much mirror twins as Konnie and I are. All those movies we watched; that whole series we watched, and we never knew.

Then again, I didn’t learn Conrad Bain had a twin until after “Different Strokes” was no longer on the air, and he mentioned his twin brother in an interview.

Of course, I also didn’t learn that Ashton Kutcher had a twin until I recently saw a TV clip about his twin brother.

And then there is Eric Christian Olsen from NCIS LA, whose twin brother has the role of his stunt double on set, and the real-life husband of Eric’s co-star Daniela Ruah, as in the actress who plays Kensi Blye on NCIS LA.

Yeah, that’s right folks, Daniela plays the love interest of Eric’s character, Marty Deeks, and her husband is Eric’s twin and stunt double!

I actually find it interesting that Eric got Daniela and David together because they were both seeking someone, and he thought they’d get along great. (Eric, himself, was already married.)

So, I guess there are a lot of twins in Hollywood.

Can you name some I haven’t?

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Mirror Twin Distractions by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Living with ADD isn’t easy and being a writer and living with ADD can be the pits. I think my life would be a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to deal with ADD.

More than once this last week I caught myself getting distracted from what I was doing each time I took a break to use the facilities or get more water. At some point or other I would notice something that needed done, or remember something I was going to do, and, instead of a couple minutes away from my computer I’d be more like twenty or longer, i.e. long enough the thing went to sleep.

But if that weren’t bad enough, I couldn’t concentrate on one manuscript! I’d get thinking about changes I needed to make on my science fiction series and open it up only to have my brain switch gears to one of two other incomplete novels I have and some changes or additions I need to make to them. Except if I opened either of those, my brain would switch back to the sci-fi.

In other words, I never got much of anything done even though my brain was actively working on my various stories – I doubt anyone could write about A and B when their brain was thinking about X and Y. I personally found it disconcerting when I had the story about A and B open, and suddenly my brain had the story about X and Y running through my thoughts and I very nearly inserted the new details for X and Y’s story into A and B’s story, which would have been more than a little weird since one is sci-fi and the other a contemporary romance. 

  

And adding to my problems with concentrating on just one story was my problems with sticking to just one task until I was done. More than once I caught myself stopping in the middle of the room, on my way back from the bathroom, trying to remember what I was going to do next, and when I did remember something to do, I’d start doing it and suddenly remember what I’d been doing before I got up, either that or I’d go back to what I’d been doing and I'd suddenly remember that I had something else I was going to do before I got back to it.

More than once it was my empty stomach or water bottle which finally reminded what I was going to do before returning to my computer.

None of which helped me because while I realized all sorts of tweaks that needed done to three different manuscripts this past week, I didn’t get a whole lot done toward actually executing any of those changes.

On the other hand, Konnie actually managed to get some writing done this last week either, more than I did anyway, which for her is an improvement, but let’s face it, her life is so much busier than mine, which is why she’s usually the one who doesn’t get a lot of writing done in a week.

Time zone wise I’m an hour earlier than Konnie is, but she beats me up every morning, because she’s up before the crack of dawn, whereas I sleep in. Typically, when most people are heading out the door for the day, I’m just crawling out of bed, while Konnie was heading out the door around the time most people are getting up in the morning, and she’s constantly busy from the moment she gets up in the morning until she finally shuts off her computer and goes to sleep each night.

I spend the majority of my time around the house, with the only noise being when I turn on the TV or the stereo. At Konnie’s house, noise erupts anytime someone so much as walks past the house. With, I think the current count is five, dogs I have a tendency to cut phone calls with my sister short because that pack started barking again.

Konnie on the other hand lives in that racket, and lives with her family, so there is always something going on, and always people talking or doing something, and it only gets quiet around there after like eleven o’clock at night, but their mornings start around four-thirty or five. And she not only works in all that chaos, she’s in charge of it!

So, while I don’t get a lot of writing done because my brain won’t focus on one project she doesn’t get a lot of writing done because her family requires so much of her attention.

As kids, living together, our lives were very similar, but things changed because we now live such different lives as adults.

Happy writing everyone. 😊