Broken Mirrors

Sept. 22, 2011

Silver

“Are you guys twins?” A lady would ask,

“Yes ma’am, we’re fraternal” I’d respond.
“Awww, what are y’all names?”
“Dwayne and, Octavius” we’d answer together.

“How old are you?” She’d individually as one of us.
“15.” I’d reply with a monotone voice.
She’d then continue with an ignorant follow up question like “ … and how old are you?” directed toward my twin.

People have a lot of misconceptions about what it’s like to be twins. A clear example of the conversation above. Twins are generally the same age unless for some miraculous reason one is born before 11:59pm on December 31^st, but with my brother and I that isn’t the case. Assumptions have been made that my brother & I dress alike, act alike, even look alike, do the same things, like the same things, but the honest truth is that we are completely different.

I was always told that I had the exact traits and attributes of my father. I took his looks, personality, and that we were walking reflections of each other. Of course my brother was also a reflecting image of my mother. My mother and brother were just alike, she favors him. Even though we we’re twins we were treated a little differently. As I got older it became more of a problem but I always kept it to myself.
         Since first grade my brother and I were always separated from each other. In 1^st grade my mother detained him & had him repeat. It wasn’t a problem since we were still in the same school and we lived in the same house until I went to high school. Small things like getting home late, starting new sports, or problems at school is what separated us from each other. Each year we’d both run track, but last year I took it upon myself and decided I wouldn’t do any sports but more or so focus on my schoolwork, and my job. The examples of us being completely opposite start to fall in as he started 2 new sports and I stopped sports. By age 8 we hated dressing alike each other. That’s when we began dressing differently.

I’ve always been the tough one, the less sensitive one, I never went to my mom for help, hated asking for help, always tried to do things myself. My brother was a completely pole apart; he was the mamas boy, which wasn’t a problem because I favored my dad. The problem I had was that she favored him as a child and I felt that we should have been treated equally, but that’s beside the point. Although him being the technically older brother (by two and a half hours) I’ve always been told I act older. His goofy, and young adolescent ways are what became the explanation for as to why I had to act older. Some people even ask us do we fight and argue. The fighting had been frequently lately but the arguing is pretty consistent since we’re different and will always have our disagreements but it’ll never change my love for him.

I bet if I didn’t take the time out of my day to write and explain how all twins aren’t the same, and how my brother and I are complete opposites, the misconceptions of twins would still spread among other citizens that thought the same. Everyone is there own person regardless of how related you are, or how much differently you look, you’ll never find two twins completely the same.