I'm not her by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Sometimes I wish Konnie lived closer, but other times I remember what is was like when we both lived in Idaho Falls. There were a few interesting situations.

Like the time the sales clerks at the grocery store we both used were convinced one of their regular customers had two husbands right up until the time Konnie went to the grocery store, with her whole family, to do their major grocery shopping. Less than an hour later I ran into the same store alone to buy a couple gallons of milk.

We ended up using the same sales clerk to check out, and she was confused with my purchase, because she was pretty sure I bought some less than an hour earlier.

I smiled. “Tell me something, did she happen to have a very short husband with her?” She nodded, still not sure what going on.

“It wasn’t me. My husband’s a foot taller than me.”

At which point she announced to all her coworkers. “They’re twins! Its not one woman with two different husbands its two women!”

Let’s make this clear, NONE of those workers ever considered the possibility of identical twins. A female bigamist, they considered, identical twins, never crossed their minds.

Then there’s the time I was shopping in the store, using an electric cart, and a woman I didn’t know came up to me, all concerned, asking if I was okay, and wondering why I was using the cart, because I seemed perfectly fine when she’d seen earlier that day, then she mentioned the school where Konnie’s two oldest daughters were attending at the time.

“Uh, not me. But I’ll tell her high for you!”

And I think I’ve mentioned before the time in eighth grade, when a friend of mine suddenly stopped talking to me. I couldn’t figure out why so the first chance I got, I confronted him about why he no longer so much as said hi to me.

He informed me he’d said hi to me the other day in the halls and I ignored him.

“Where and when?”

“Between sixth and seventh, down by the gym.”

Well, my sixth and seventh period classes were clear on the other end of the school, which I pointed out to him. He said, “I saw you.”

“Oh, I believe you saw somebody who looked a lot like me, but strangely she wasn’t wearing what I had been wearing in our class that morning, was she?”

“Huh?”

“I’m a twin, and she has seventh period gym.”

Once when I was still in Tacoma, while Konnie was away at Ricks College in Idaho, a friend of mine and I were heading into our church to attend a dance. Well, there were several people standing just outside the entrances chatting. We didn’t know any of them, so we started to move past them toward the door.

But as I passed one of the guys grabbed my arm and said, “Don’t I know you? Weren’t you in . . .” he named a class, “at Ricks last semester?”

“No, but I’ll tell her hi for you.” I think it was actually the first time I used that statement.

I might add, my friend had never actually met Konnie, but I’d told her about her, so she knew when the guy mentioned Ricks what was going on; she had a hard time containing her glee while I explained to the fellow why the girl who had been in his class wasn’t me.

Between her giggles she said, “I know you told me about her, but I never thought . . .”

Though I’m not quite sure what she never thought because she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to spit it out. I’m telling you, every time she tried to finish her sentence, she cracked up again. I gave up. However, I think I can guess.

She never considered we were so identical that someone could mistake me for her.

Come on. People who know both of us can get us mixed up! Including our dad, who relied on our stepmother to tell us apart until we grew up and married when he told us apart by our husbands.

Which was easy because they were as different as night and day, or rather, a cat and mouse. My nearly six-foot man was Tom, and her barely 5’4” man is Jerry. Yip, that’s right, their names are Tom and Jerry. Dad got quite a few chuckles from it.

Happy writing everyone!