The one thing about living so geographically far apart is
that neither Konnie nor I have to worry about total strangers approaching us, thinking we are our twin. It has been years since such a thing occurred.
In fact, the last time someone I had not previously met approached
me with a welcoming smile of someone seeing a friend, she actually knew full
well I wasn’t Konnie. Her first words to me were, “You’re Bonnie, aren’t
you?”
Of course, thanks to Facebook, I knew who she was on sight,
and thanks to Konnie and her own big brother, she was fully aware that Konnie
is a twin as well as that Konnie doesn’t live in this town, but I do.
Logically, she knew I had to be Bonnie when she saw me, because logically she
knew Konnie couldn’t be here.
Konnie has in the past been approached by someone knowing
full well she wasn’t me, but also knowing she was my twin, but in that case,
Konnie didn’t know the woman, or rather women, who approached her.
In that long-ago case, a coworker of mine quit and
moved to the Tacoma, Washington area to help her own twin, who was in a
wheelchair by that point. I let her know my twin sister was living in the area
as well, but we both knew, because of the size of the area, the chances of them
meeting were slim. A little over a week later, Konnie let me know that a set of older twin women,
one in a wheelchair, approached her in the mall with the news that the one walking
knew me.
At any rate, it has happened, but it is rare. Usually, we
have instances more on the lines of the year I went to the Idaho Falls airport
to fly down to Vegas for Christmas and a young lady already waiting at the terminal
approached me at first with that familiar smile of recognition but then
realization dawned on her and she switched to a more cautious approach asking
me if I knew anyone by the last name of Enos.
Obviously, I do, several people actually, but knowing what
information the young lady was after, I informed her that Konnie Enos was my twin
sister.
And this is a story I’ve told before; the young lady was a
friend of Konnie’s two oldest daughters and was on her way home from BYU-Idaho for
Christmas. We were taking the same flight to Vegas.
Though in all our lives, I think the funniest occurrence that
happened because of how identical we are was back when we both lived in Idaho
Falls. Back then, we lived within a couple of miles of each other, and for both
of us, the same store was closest.
I should point out that both of us sometimes went shopping
with our families, and as at the time I had two boys and three girls, and she
had three girls, let alone the size difference between our husbands, we should
have realized the employees of that store were a little confused.
All of it came to a head one day when I left my family home
and ran to the store to pick up a few things we needed, mostly milk, as I
recall. When I arrived at the checkout, the salesclerk remarked something about
forgetting something. I was totally confused by the statement because she didn’t
ask me if I found everything I needed; she made a comment, which sounded like
she thought I was making a return trip because I forgot something.
I frowned at her and told her that I had gotten everything I’d
come for. Her response was to point out that I had supposedly been through her
checkout less than an hour before. I chuckled at that and informed her I’m a twin.
She hadn’t wanted to believe me but as I described Jerry and Tom and let her
know which husband, and children were mine, and which were Konnie’s she
eventually realized I was speaking the truth at which point to yelled for her
coworkers at the other registers to hear, “She’s not cheating, she’s a twin!”
As I recall, the next time we went to the store, we coordinated
and went together to drive home that we were indeed twins.
The last time we went to a store together, I recall a lot of
people turning and staring at us as we went around the store, though no one approached
us and asked us if we were twins, which is sort of what got me thinking about
these sorts of incidents that and I’ve seen a lot of posts about identical twins
getting confused for their twin, and or mixed up on social media lately.
At any rate, we don’t generally have that problem living so
far apart.
Well, happy writing, everyone!
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