Twinageddon
September is always a busy busy month for us in The House of the Flying Martinis. This year it was even busier. It appears that most of my family decided to become or have offspring at this time of year and therefore the whole month must be set aside for celebrating.
Not least of all those celebrations was the fortieth birthday of my husband, the infamous Meeester M along with that of his twin sister, who is not allowed to be called Misssy M because I thought of it first, so will therefore be called Meeester’sTwin. Incidentally, we celebrated Meeester’sTwin’s birthday 20 minutes earlier than Meeester’s.
A big fuss was made.
I have spent the last three weeks collecting, scanning, collaging, cutting, framing, gluing and stealing old photographs of the two birthday bods into various pieces of memorabilia designed to make both of them cry with emotion and/or embarassment. No awkward spotty gawky teenage photo has gone unused. No mullet, perm or shiny wedding suit has been edited out.
Then a quiz was devised pitting the twins against the rest of the family answering questions on their lives and foibles. I called it Twinageddon and and it was so good that TV company Celador who make Who Want to be a Millionaire are rumoured to be interested in optioning it on a five year global contract. How we laughed as we remembered MeeestersTwin’s crush of former Scottish First Minister Donald Dewar after a misunderstanding in a Glasgow coffee shop. How we cried as we remembered Brabbajackal the frozen pet guinea pig their mother was advised to thaw out in the oven by the vet, but forgot to tell the twins about the situation when they came home expecting their tea.
All this twin business actually made me quite envious- how lovely to be a twin. I wish I had a twin, I’d think from time to time as I cut yet another seventies image of two wee kids who don’t look remotely like each other but seemed always to be hanging about together and often had the same anoraks on.
This pair seem to have the best of both worlds, because as nice as it is to be a twin who has shared experiences, birthdays and milestones, being “not from the same egg” as they would repeatedly tell anyone who asked, and of course of different sexes, they wouldn’t have the frankly freaky lookalikey thing going on.
Being an identical twin couldn’t be as good as their situation. Identical twins would be subjected to a lifetime of other people who couldn’t tell you both apart and people would comment on who was the brighter, the better natured, the more dominant, as people tend to do to be able to distinguish between identical twins, not realising how annoying that must be.
Then there’s the whole getting married thing. You meet the man who ends up being your husband, but it turns out that he’s an identical twin. Don’t you feel a bit weird when you meet a second version of him? Don’t you worry, even only deep down in your dark subconscious, that one night, for a laugh, they might swap places just to freak everyone out? I have a friend who is married to an identical twin. I don’t know her well enough yet to ask her that question, but I’m working up to it.
So anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing with my September, making a fuss of my favourite twins and thinking freaky thoughts about identical twins.
Oh, that and getting excited about the genius present I got for my most favourite of husbands: a trip to New York! With me!
Hey, I’m walkin’ here!
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