Last
week I was on Facebook and saw a couple of videos of young kids, toddlers or
younger, reacting to seeing twins for the first time. One was a little girl,
toddler, reacting to meeting her father’s twin brother.
Since
my sister and I can’t see each other every day because of distance, we’ve had
some experience with this reaction. I had two daughters, both under three, when
my sister and her husband were able to come visit us at my house. (We’d seen
each other a couple of years before at our Dad’s place.)
When
my sister walked in it was fun watching the kids look back and forth between
the two of us trying to figure out what they were seeing. My older girl, who
was pushing three, had actually met my sister at our Dad’s place. Her eyes got
big but she accepted my introduction. She was then and always has been a very
friendly girl, though a bit shy at first. She had no problems with her Aunt
Bonnie.
Now,
my younger daughter hated strangers. In fact if she couldn’t see Mommy well
then she better have Daddy, or Grandma Sharon (all of which she lived with).
Anyone else and she’d scream like a banshee until I picked her up again, and I
mean for hours on end without stopping. And she’d probably start screaming for
both Sharon and her daddy if I didn’t show up fast enough. So I held her for
her first meeting with her Aunt Bonnie. And like all babies, the sight of two
faces so similar confused her, but she had mom and was fine.
Then
at one point during Bonnie’s visit I needed to run errands and left Bonnie with
the kids while my baby was asleep, but I hurried concerned she’d wake up and
start her banshee impersonation. However, when I got home I found my kids on
the couch with their aunt Bonnie reading a story to them, and my baby was fine.
I
avoided the couch and did some chores that needed done while I had the
reprieve. And it lasted until my daughter got hungry. At which time she got
really upset when she realized the woman holding her didn’t have anything to
feed her.
But,
besides the people she lived with, Bonnie was the first person who could take
care of that particular daughter without earplugs. The next person who walked
into her life who ever managed that ended up becoming her favorite uncle.
Anyway,
it’s fun watching kids react to seeing two of the same person for the first
time. And their confusion can be hilarious if one of those twins is someone
they see all the time and the other one isn’t. Kind of reminds me of the
incident in eighth grade when the Neilson boy, started talking to me outside
our fourth period classes (which were across the hall from each other) and
while I was trying to figure out why he would even talk to me Bonnie walked up
all happy because we were actually being nice to one another.
He
gasped. “There’s two of you!”
At
which point I saw the Neilson boy walk into his fourth period class down the
hall. “That’s nothing. There’s two of you too.” Which solved the problem of why
Bonnie liked him and I didn’t, and apparently solved the same issue for the two
of them.
