Who is Susan and Other Mix Ups by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Who is Susan?

This has been bothering me for almost a week. And it started when I was in the checkout lane at Walmart last week. At one point I heard someone call out, “Susan,” somewhere behind me, but I didn’t turn around, since I didn’t think it had anything to do with me.

That is until someone stepped up to me and asked me if my name was Susan!

Now I know a lot of women by that name, but no one in their right mind would ever confuse me for any of them, so I have no idea who this person is.

I mean I can see someone mistaking me for Konnie. People have often mistaken me for Konnie, but this is only the third time anyone has confused me for someone who wasn’t Konnie and the other two times happened back in while I was attending college in Rexburg, ID, and Konnie was in Tacoma, WA.

It started with me falling down a flight of stairs and spraining my ankle so bad I ended up in a cast for several weeks.

One day while in that cast, I went to a meeting of a group I was in only to have one of the girls accuse me of nearly running her over in the crosswalk earlier that day.

Folks, I didn’t have a car at the time. So, while I and my friend who was with me tried to assure her, I wasn’t even in a car at any point that day, another girl came in and wondered what on earth had happened to me because I hadn’t been in a cast when she saw me earlier that day. I’d been in a cast for over a week at that point, and my friend wasn’t the only one there who could vouch for me.

Okay, they actually mistook someone other than Konnie for me, because it couldn’t have been Konnie. A fact which had the friend I was with going nuts since we’d gone to school together in eighth grade.

That’s not to say I can’t name women who fit mine, and Konnie’s, general description in build, hair color, and glasses, but none of the ones I can name are Susans. I mean short, round, with streaks of gray in your brown hair, and glasses could describe a lot of women. But that doesn’t mean they look just like me, and Konnie.

And then, while wondering about who Susan was a friend of mine posted a pic about a mom worrying about whether or not she got her twins mixed up and they’d have to go by the wrong name for the rest of their lives.

My friend was saying this was her fear for her twin daughters.

My brother Ben, who also knows her, posted that he thought this had happened to his sisters. So, I informed him that yes it did happen.

At some point, between the stitches incident and entering school, Momma switched us, probably several times, without realizing it.

We went all the way through school and my marriage before we managed to put two and two together between the hospital saying Konnie got the stitches and our one aunt who always insisted the twin with the rounder face and more outgoing personality was Konnie.

Said aunt hadn’t seen us a whole lot during those years because we didn’t live with her brother, our father, most of that time, which is why it took so long to get the facts straight. Too long. It would have taken going to court for a name change to fix the issue. Too much money and too much hassle.

Besides, it also meant getting used to a name we had denied being ours for as long as we could remember.

Though we should have realized something was up when we learned our mother had changed the K to a B on my baby book and the B to a K on Konnie’s baby book. But I can’t remember when we first noticed that. I do know we thought she’d just mixed us up once when we were babies.

She even once mentioned trying to compare our fingerprints with our prints from when we were newborns to get us straight, but our prints were too alike to tell.

And she was constantly saying she’d been so confused the day of the accident, which ended with me getting stitches, that wasn’t even sure which daughter was hurt and which was bawling.

Here’s a hint, Konnie got the stitches, so Bonnie was bawling. I have the scar.

I guess our life would make for a good story though.

Anyway, happy writing everyone.

Identical Twin Issues By Bonnie Le Hamilton

I know I wrote a post several years ago about an incident where I greeted one of our uncles at a time and place Konnie couldn’t have been and he called me Konnie. I still clearly remember glaring at him and saying, “What did you call me?”

Well that happened long before Tom died, so its been years since I’ve been mistaken for Konnie.

There was a more recent experience where an old friend from high school spotted me and asked me if I was Bonnie or Konnie. So not quite the same thing.

And I certainly thought since Konnie lives so far away, that such incidents would be few and far between and only happen around people who know both of us, like say an uncle or an old classmate. I never once considered it would happen where I am living now, even though Konnie has been to visit me here, but it has now happened.

The set up starts with the fact that we had a visitor in Relief Society from another ward who happens to be named Connie. This sister knew several members of our ward including the teacher.

At one point, Connie made a comment and I raised my hand to make a comment too. Once Connie was done speaking, the teacher turned to me and said, “You had a comment, Connie?”

I stared at her, way too stunned for a second, and I almost said, “Konnie isn’t here.” But since Connie and Konnie are pronounced the same, and there was a Connie in the room, I simply said, “Um, I’m Bonnie.”

She apologized and well, I couldn’t help it, I said, “But my twin isn’t even here!”

Everyone laughed and we got on with the lesson, but I’m still stunned by it.

Yeah, she has met Konnie. Her and her mom usually sit right in front of where I sit in the chapel. And Konnie was here for a visit way back in September. I just didn’t expect someone who barely knew Konnie existed to call me Konnie!

It also illustrates what it's like to be a mirror twin, at least on one level.

Very few people can tell us apart.

And that isn’t limited to people who don’t know us well, since, after all, our uncle has known us our entire lives. The same could be said for our father, who always had trouble telling us apart until the day he died.

The last time I spoke to him on the phone, he didn’t realize which of his twins he was talking to until I mentioned Tom. That’s right, at the end of his life, he was telling us apart by our husband. You absolutely can’t confuse Tom and Jerry.

(And for all those who used to watch the old Tom & Jerry cartoons, I promise the analogy fits.)

But while some people who have known us our entire lives have trouble telling us apart others with much shorter association with us have no trouble telling us apart. Starting with our stepmother, who never seemed to have a problem.

But as I sit here thinking about every time I’ve been mistaken for Konnie, I remember something that happened clear back in 9^th grade. Maybe I’ve mentioned it before.

The time when I was looking for Konnie and a friend saw me and said something about me changing fast. I looked her right in the eye and said, “Wrong one. And where did you see her last?”

It took her a second to remember, but she did and I eventually found Konnie.

Anyway, that is life as an identical twin in a nutshell. Very few people can tell you apart.

Which explains the incident back in our high school marriage and family class where we told the teacher we couldn’t decide what our top priority for a future husband was. It was either they could tell us apart or were members of our church.

She said, “Well, considering how religious you two are, I’d said a member of your church.”

We glanced at each other than faced her and in unison said, “You’re not a twin.”

And I promise only an identical twin can understand the need to have people around them who can tell the difference between them and their twin.

And I will always cherish the time when Tom walked up to Konnie for the very first time and said, “Hello, you must be Konnie. Where’s Bonnie?”

But equally nice is the first time Jerry ever set eyes on me. He walked into his own living room and saw me sitting on his couch holding his infant daughter and said, “Hello there, where’s my wife?”

And they are both members!

Happy writing everyone!

Twins in Stories by Bonnie Le Hamilton

I’m a twin. I am not just a twin, and not just an identical twin I’m a mirror twin, hence the name of this blog. I’m also a writer. As a writer, I’m supposed to write what I know.

And it’s not as if I don’t write about twins. I have twins in fifteen of my stories (technically sixteen, but they’re less predominant in book 2 of that series, and yes, it’s the same twins, more than one set even.) Fifteen, or sixteen, out of fifty, and in only one of them is the main character a twin. And in all of them, the sets of twins present in the story are younger siblings, and or nieces (excluding that second book where they are the older cousins of the heroine).

I know twins. I know what it’s like to be a twin. I don’t know what’s it’s like to be a singleton because I am a twin. That’s just part of who I am. Yet as often as I write heroines who look like me, I’ve only written one who is a twin, and that was a fraternal twin, and said twin is dead.

I’ve written, well as I said, sixteen stories with twins in them, but I don’t have their POV’s in the stories (excluding the one story). I don’t have scenes where someone mistakes them for their twin.

Okay, maybe I don’t have that, because I consider this a bit cliché. Not that I’ve actually read them, I generally don’t read beyond the blurb when I realize it’s another switched places or got-mistaken-for-the-other type of story. It’s more than a little overdone.

But how to do you write stories about twins without mixing up or switching them?

In ways it makes since writer’s who have twins in their stories follow that line, but I’m getting the feeling that’s the only thing authors think of when they write about twins.

Off the top of my head, I can think of four published books with main characters who are a twin, which doesn’t do this. In two of the ones I can think of the main character is Kit Fielding, i.e. one of Dick Francis’ characters, and Kit is a fraternal twin, so mixing up and switching places is out of the question. One is a romance where the hero’s identical twin brother is brain damaged. No way to get them mixed up, despite how much they look alike. And the fourth is “And Jacob Have I loved.” Again, not about twins switching and getting mixed up.

In other words, I feel the getting-twins-mixed-up or the twins-switching-places stories are overused, overdone, and need to be scrapped.

And that explains why I’ve never had an identical twin as a main character.

Glad I finally figured it out.

Happy writing everyone! J

Twin Musings by Bonnie Le Hamilton

As the title of this blog states, Konnie and I are mirror twins. And as we’ve already mentioned in our posts, mirror twins are mirror opposites.

The foremost sign of mirror twins is one is a lefty and the other a righty. Well, I’m the righty. And a while back, Konnie and I got on the subject of can openers.

She doesn’t have a ton of counter space, and I thought it weird that she had an electric one (and to be honest, I don’t have an electric one because my husband never liked the possibility of not being able to open a can in a power outage). She insisted that it’s hard to open a can using a can opener designed for the predominately right-handed world.

At the time of the conversation, I had to take her word for it, but well, the last couple of weeks, I’m beginning to see her point. You see my right thumb has developed arthritis and it’s been bugging me, a lot. And she was not kidding when she said its dang near impossible for a lefty to work a can opener build for a righty.

 I’m seriously considering one of those newfangled battery powered can openers, which won’t take up my limited counter space.

I’m also thinking about how I might write a story where a character has to, at least temporarily, use the hand he isn’t used to using, for whatever reason, though I still don’t have a reason, or a character for that matter.

And as I’m writing this, I recall a scene from MASH, which Alan Alda did with his father. They were both playing doctors, and their bickering, a lot, they don’t like each other at all, then both of them are injured (one his left arm and other his right arm), and well they need to operate on an injured soldier to save his life, even though they are hurt. They end up having to do the surgery together because neither of them had the use of both hands.

That was quite a scene for me to remember it decades later.

Have any of you ever written in scene or story plot where a character has to deal with not being able to use a limb or maybe even one of their senses, at least temporarily?

Personally, I can think of a character I have with a broken leg, but that’s about the worst I’ve done. I really should try this idea. Anyone with me?

Happy writing everyone! J

Mirror Opposites

Ever since Konnie visited me last month, all my friends have been commenting on how much alike we are, and it got me thinking about how, being a mirror twin is more about how much we are opposites then about how much we are alike. The definition of mirror twins is after all, “mirror opposites.”

Yes, we look alike but we are different. Though I admit those differences are things that most people don’t notice. I think it might have something to do with how most people depend too heavily on sight, or maybe don’t utilize it enough, maybe a mix of both. Because honestly, people fixate on our face, and don’t see anything else.

Like we dress differently. Oh, we both dress modestly, but we do have different tastes.

Our hair is also different lengths, well it is now, and really for a lot of our lives, just that we can’t ever seem to agree. Though well, technically, this last time I cut mine off, it started with the doctor shaving half my head.

(Let’s just say, he got it all, and leave it at that.)

But beyond that, people do change their hairstyles over time and we’ve gone from me having the shorter hair to me having longer hair and back again, several times. That has annoyed a few people over the years, those few who depended on our hair length to tell us apart.

And that is because too many depend on what they see, and not on what their other senses tell them, like the fact that Konnie is a soprano and I’m an alto. Although to be honest, our blind counselor in high school knew that about us, and still had to depend on our hair length to figure out which was which. And boy was he annoyed when Konnie chopped her hair off!

Anyway, we are different, in a lot of ways, because, after all, we are “mirror opposites.”

Happy writing everyone! :)