The twins that got me in a spin

I recently attended an event, well, an after-funeral gathering in a pub to be honest, full of people I mainly didn’t know.  This isn’t about the funeral, which I think passed as well as everybody hoped, and to which I mean no disrespect, but about two ladies who were there.  A pair of identical twins.

Jedward – both mad as a box of frogs, but who farted?

Now, these ladies were in their late 50s, and, having obviously grown up together, then went their separate ways, one living in the North of England, the other in the South.  I can’t make this more mysterious by saying that they hadn’t seen each other for over 30 years or something, because from time to time they had.

However, they really were identical in so many ways.  Not being unkind, but, how can I put this, both ladies had all but identical, erm, ‘weathering’ on their faces showing the stresses of life (phew, I think I got away with that!) and both elected to not wear make-up.  Both had identically cut silver-grey hair, which both kept moving off and behind their ears.  Both wore more or less the same dresses (black, with different, but very similar patterns). Both were drinking red wine. Both had a rather distinctive, erm, shuffle in their walk.  Both had a particular way of talking.  Both had a habit of walking off mid-sentence.  Both needed to wear glasses for reading (something they’d not grown-up together having to do).  Both would initially put their glasses on in a very strange and skewed way, all but bending and distorting the frames, leaving them sitting at an odd angle on the end of their noses.  Both had narrow lensed glasses, neither had big round glasses.

Were it not for me fixing into my memory the differences in the patterns on the dresses each was wearing, and, not meaning to sound indelicate, the fact that one was a little, erm, ‘plumper’ than the other, I would have been lost to say which was which.  Indeed, had they so wished, one could have deliberately posed as the other and I would have been absolutely none the wiser.

I’m afraid I occupied most of my time watching these two, who were circulating around the attendees whilst mainly avoiding each other.  Listening to their respective children (who were all young adults) chatting to each other, I learned that both had identical annoying habits, and both were, I assume affectionately, as ‘mad as a box of frogs’.  Indeed, one went so far as to say something along the lines of, “Isn’t it usual for only one of a set of twins to be mad?”  Cruel, but meant with great affection I’m sure, after all we need people who are ‘different’ to stop this world being so boring!  It is for them to set the trends and make a difference, not the sheep.

Had I been involved in the actual conversation I might have offered ‘Jedward’ as a further example of how both twins can be raving bonkers, but let’s not go there.

Anyway, it is not my purpose here to genuinely ridicule these fine ladies.  What I am curious about is how and why they developed all but identical habits whilst living apart.  Let’s just take the one thing I mentioned about the glasses.

Both developed the need to wear glasses long after they’d gone their separate ways and built their own lives, yet, both had identical quirks relating to their glasses.  I’m sure there could be many other things they do identically that are worthy of study, but only the glasses ritual stuck in my mind and was there for me to casually observe. Fair enough, one could argue the genetics and biology of both getting to an age when they needed reading glasses, that’s not the issue.  This is about their quirks and habits.

I suppose there is a chance that there are more things they do differently than things they do identically, but it does make it rather look as if we are not actually individuals, but will follow a very specific pattern with how we do things and what we will look like.  We only notice this when there are identical twins to examine.

In a way, that’s a bit sad and shows that everything is pre-decided and pre-conditioned.  Even though there is only one of me, all my habits, abilities, character and personality traits are dominated by a pre-destiny. Sure, different life experiences will have shaped me differently to a parallel universe me not experiencing the same things, but it does seems that the fundamentals of who I am and my quirks were coded within me at conception.

I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with that, but I guess it means we are who we are and that’s all we will ever be.