Twins' Mates and Friends


© Jodi Michael Horner

My husband, Todd, maintains that the first time he ever saw me he knew that I wasn't my identical twin sister, Jami Lynn. The story that he sticks to is that he thought I was even cuter than my sister. This works well for him and for me, too.

Being a twin is a lot like being married, there's the we factor; in a way, it's like being one half of a whole, though individually we are whole as well. Fraternal twins are paired from birth, everything they grow in they somehow do together. Indentical twins have this same experience plus the fact that their genes are "identical." My sister and I still refer to "our" eye color, "our" skin color, etc...anything genetic is "ours," even when the other is not around. Admittedly this is a little weird! It's possibly unique to our style of communication but also a testament to the mentality of sharing the bond of twinship.

As a twin I might have a litmus test for the sincerity of people that others may not have: if a person chooses to get past the fact that we're twins and in our case as identical twins, the surface similarities, then I see them as more interested than the average Joe. They're aware that knowing a person requires a sincere look beyond the obvious externals.

Often people ask if we have the same friends. As I've mentioned before, the answer to these types of questions will vary with which set of twins you ask. I have noticed that in our case and in many of my twin friends' cases they shared friends more as they were younger. The older they grew the more opportunities there were for meeting people individually. When Jami Lynn and I were preschoolers, our best friend was Eddie. I don't recall there ever being a competition for his attention; again, the "we" mentality was prevalent. Sometimes we spent time with Eddie without the other, often the three of us played together.

Since we were placed in separate classes in grade school, we obviously had different classmates and hence different friends. In the first grade we immediately found different "best friends," though we still had several friends with whom we spent time a pair. In the third grade my best friend was Jenni, Jami Lynn's best friend was Heather. But we both spent a lot of time with our friend, Kara.

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages

1.   Jan 9, 2003 10:10 AM
I'm 37 and an identical twin. I thought the article was great. My sister and I, always had the same group of friends, up until high school. Although we still hung out together. I have to say that a ...

-- posted by pixygirl7





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