I am guessing that most of you know that I am a twin. When mum and dad were expecting us, in 1948, there were no MRI scans or anything fancy like that so it came as quite a shock !!! when, just six weeks before we were due to be born, the doctor told mum that she was expecting twins.
What followed was a frantic scramble to buy all the goods that were going to be needed, basically another complete lot of what they had already purchased for a single baby. Then, with what was to be very prescient timing, Paul and I arrived early.
Having had two kids of my own and being associated closely with the upbringing of my three wonderful grandsons, I still can’t imagine what mum and dad had to go through bringing us up when we were little tackers.
Paul and I were born half an hour apart. Our parents always told us that I was the eldest and we have gone through life believing this. We would have continued doing so but for the fact that, some years ago, Paul was required to produce an extract of his original birth certificate on which it sad, “Paul, first born of twins.” When we asked mum about this, she explained that dad, probably still in a state of shock!! had probably made a mistake when he registered the births. In any event, it’s way too late to change things now so I will continue to claim the eldest status.
We are identical twins rather than fraternal. This doesn’t mean that we look alike though we most certainly do, and talk alike and everything else alike. What it means is that we are the result of one egg being fertilised and then splitting into two embryo after fertilisation has taken place. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, are the result of two separate eggs being fertilisied by two separate swimmers. This is why fraternal twins can be either a male or a female or two males and two females. This is also why fraternal twins do not look alike even if they are both of the same gender (a fact that the makers of the famous movie use to their advantage)
The fact that we ARE identical, especially as far as our appearance is concerned, anyway, has led to a lifetime of joking, pranking and mass confusion on all sorts of levels, as I’m sure you can imagine. You would THINK that this would decrease with the process of time but the sad fact is that, it is probably increasing, since we are constantly on the lookout for new targets of our silliness.
As far as the usual twin things are concerned, we are probably a disappointment. We do not feel each other’s pain, experience the often documented telepathic communications or fall victim to similar ailments concurrently. However, because we ARE, basically one individual split in two, our medical histories have been very similar.
Also very similar have been our progeny. Paul’s son and my son are almost carbon copies of each other and while his daughter and mine are not visually similar, they are, in many ways, similar in their personalities. Of course this is because, genetically, they are half brothers and half sisters.
And there have been some very strange episodes during our lives that can only be explained by the fact that we ARE twins. in 1969 we were living hundreds of miles apart and yet, for entirely different reasons we both bought a guitar and started to learn to play it within a few short weeks of each other with no collaboration of any kind until after the event. Similarly, in 1974, with, again, no collaboration and for seemingly no good reason within a couple of weeks of each other, we both bought a motorcycle and started riding it. Again, we were living hundreds of miles apart from each other and had had no conversation that was even vaguely concerned with motorcycling.
On a closer level, we sound the same on the telephone, we regularly and have always completed each others’ sentences and have pursued amazingly similar career paths.
So, if you pass Paul and say Hi and he doesn’t answer it isn’t because I’m being curt with you, it’s just that it’s not me. I could tell you so many stories of the confusion that the two of us have caused in the pits at various Island Classic meetings, we even “zinged” Robbie Phillis and we’ve known him for nearly 50 years!
There is a lot of fun attached to being a twin.
