When someone poses this question, I often sense they have the expectation to hear an answer like, "It's great having someone exactly like me." But I think it stands to reason that there are as many answers to the question as there are people who are twins. http://prince.thinkquest.org/4210/index.... http://www.geocities.com/twindotcom/inde...
My frequent response: "What's it like to not be a twin?"
As a general rule, siblings are compared. It's all the more true with twins, especially identical twins. There are many contributing factors as to why this is, but let's just for now focus on the obvious: identical twins look a lot alike!
In an attempt to dichotomize us, people try to decipher the differences. Some of my favorite observations of "contrast" of my sister and me: "You guys have different skin color, Jami Lynn's darker," (my sister had been to a tanning booth), "Jodelle looks heavier than Jami Lynn," (there's no Law of Twindom that says we have to eat from the same menu!) You get the idea.
My sister and I looked forward to entering college; the plan was to enroll in separate universities. There, we anticipated a whole new world of individuality. No one would know we were twins, no one would expect us to be the same. Neither of us wanted to even tell our new friends of our twinship. It wasn't a matter of embarrassment; it was just that we felt we'd somehow be viewed differently, as part of a whole instead of a whole on our own. So we kept our "secret identities" in the quest for "individual identities" for as long as we could. Of course, the photos we kept in our dorm rooms gave us away. "Your sister looks just like you are you twins?" Since neither of us wanted to lie, we admitted to the truth. And we endured the common response and attempt at humor, "Oh, there's two of you?" responses. (I don't mean to state the obvious, but there is not two of anyone!)
Starting in junior high and continuing through high school, my sister was considered the "rebel," more spirited, and I was the "good," conservative one. In any family, childrens' personality development is likely affected by the presence of siblings. Most people have heard the "good twin/bad twin" stereotype. I think my sister and I fell into that as a way of defining ourselves.
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