This past week, I came across a social media post asking identical twins about something embarrassing that happened simply because they are identical.
Of course, this interested me
greatly since I am, after all, an identical twin, but I found myself reminiscing
when it came to one of the stories in that post.
In the story, a guy told of a time
his twin brother praised a certain restaurant for having great service and excellent
food, so the guy decided to take his wife there.
During the evening, he found the
food was indeed excellent, but the service was cold and even hostile, until
ruckus laughter broke out near the front door, then his twin and said twin’s
wife came around the corner! It seems the staff thought he was cheating on his
wife when he wasn’t his twin at all.
Boy, did that bring back memories,
though it didn’t involve a restaurant. In our case, it involved a grocery store.
This was at least a couple of decades ago, but at one point we lived within a
mile of each other in the city of Idaho Falls, Idaho, which is the closest geographically
we’d lived to each other since we were attending the same college in 1983.
As a consequence of living so
close, we shopped at the same grocery store.
Now let’s set the scene, I have mentioned
before how different our husbands are in size, but you add the differences
between our children, and I would have thought any sane person would conclude
we were two different people. I mean, really, I was married four years before
Konnie got married, and my oldest son turned two within weeks of Konnie’s
wedding. Not only that, but he also had a much taller daddy, so he wasn’t
petite like his oldest cousin. Who, by the way, was born when I was like five
months along with my second son.
Then you need to consider that
Konnie, at the time, had three daughters while I had two boys and three
daughters. And not only was my oldest boy obviously older than her oldest, but
well, there was less than nine months between her second oldest daughter and my
oldest daughter, and her youngest daughter was still an infant when my twins
were born.
Needless to say, the math on the
possibility of one woman having all those kids just doesn’t work, so I honestly
couldn’t see how anyone could get us confused, after all our father was at that
point telling us apart by our husbands and children!
So, anyway, one day I ran to the
store alone, just to pick up a gallon of milk. When I got to the register, the
salesclerk commented, “Forget something?”
Which, in and of itself, was odd, since they normally ask if the customer found everything they needed. I
was confused by the statement, but pointed out that it was the first time I’d
been to the store that day.
The salesclerk insisted I’d been
through her line less than an hour before my milk run.
It took a couple of minutes to
convince her I hadn’t been in the store earlier, and I finally managed it by
pointing out I was not dressed the way the woman she’d seen almost an hour
earlier had been attired. I knew that was so, despite not having seen Konnie that
day, because we haven’t had anything identical in our separate wardrobes since
our late teens.
Once I convinced her I wasn’t
Konnie, she loudly announced to her coworkers, “It’s not a woman leading a
double life! There’s two of them!”
To reinforce that newfound
knowledge, Konnie and I coordinated our next shopping trip to go together, which was an experience and a half, because we are talking eight kids and two
sets of identical twins.
It would have been more fun if our
husbands had been there, but oh well.
I can remember once when my twins
were still infants, going to Walmart together and turning heads. In fact, one
little kid pointed toward my double stroller and said, “Mom! Look! Twins!”
The mom glanced back at our entourage
and replied, "More than one set.”
Yeah, we turn a lot of heads when
we go to the store together.
Anytime we go someplace together,
we turn heads, such is the lot of identical twins. I think the last time we
went shopping together was a few years ago when she came here to attend a
writing conference with me.
We went to the store I usually shop
at, Konnie faithfully following me around the store, both of us using a
mobility cart. It was hilarious watching all those people doing all those
double-takes.
Anyway, happy writing, everyone.
