Of Earrings and Differences by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Last week, Konnie posted about not having pierced ears anymore and switching to magnetic earrings. Not a problem, right?

Wrong!

As some of you might remember, I posted a while back about an incident in high school when I told some friend how to tell if they were speaking to Konnie or me. Back then, I told them if they say hi and I answer, it’s me, if I ignore them, it’s Konnie.

In high school, neither of us had pierced ears.

I was in fact quite stunned when she arrived to see me for our birthday while I was working for the summer in Grand Teton National park and she had pierced ears!

After a while, I got used to her having pierced ears, then eventually realized those earrings made it easier to tell us apart. I started mentioning it to others as a way to tell us apart.

That isn’t to say that people actually paid attention to that difference. Our father only started to be able to tell us apart by which man we were with.

I believe I have mentioned more than once the huge difference between Tom (my husband) and Jerry (her husband). Though of course when our children came along, he could tell by the kids as well. As I had one kid before she even got married and two boys before I had my first daughter, Konnie started with girls, three of them before getting her two boys.

Even so, I did try to point out my lack of piercings to illustrate that I was not Konnie. I guess in a way, I found this difference unique enough that I actually used it in one of my incomplete stories. This story has a set of identical twin sisters in it, but one of them (the married one) has pierced ears and the other one doesn’t.

Of course, in that story the other one, the female lead, doesn’t have a wedding ring or a passel full of kids, but still, she didn’t have pierced ears! I even have her tell the male lead to tell them apart by who has pierced ears. In the story he countered that she could get her ear pierced someday, to which she promised that wasn’t happening.

Yeah, I never really thought it through all that well. The one does have a wedding ring and the other one doesn’t, but well, Konnie and I both have wedding rings. And it’s a whole lot easier to mention the ears than to describe the differences in our wedding bands.

And before any of you ask, I’ll be sixty-three in less than two weeks – I am not getting my ears pierced ever!

I might also point out that our glasses are different. They have actually never been identical. From the first pair we ever got, we never chose identical glasses. I can think of once or twice when we didn’t get them at the same time or place, and accidentally ended up with similar frames (similar, not identical), but in those cases, we lived hundreds of miles apart, so it didn’t really matter.

I can assure you that while we occasionally dressed alike or similar growing up, it was always because someone else provided us with those clothes. Given a choice we never dressed alike, and we do have different tastes in clothes. I assure you, now that we buy our own clothes, we have nothing identical to wear.

But we are still back to, I used to be the only one without pierced ears. Now, how do people tell us apart?

Well, let’s see, except for my cat (who’s sixth birthday was this past Sunday) I live alone. I’m a widow. Konnie clearly is not. She also clearly doesn’t live alone. She doesn’t even have an empty nest!

I have a cat. She has dogs.

I pay rent on an apartment. She pays a mortgage on her house.

She spent most or a good portion of her life working outside the home. I spent most of my life as a housewife.

Looks and similar voices are not the entirety of our existence. By the way, she is a soprano, and I am an alto. I promise.

Then again, we both write and do handcrafts, mostly all the same ones, but not completely because I do beading and she doesn’t. Of course, one genre she writes is fantasy. I do not write fantasy.

Heck, I have barely even read Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson. I’m just not as into fantasy as she is.

I have one WIP, which is speculative fiction. She hasn’t attempted that genre yet. Who knows, maybe one day she will, but I doubt I’ll ever write fantasy.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!