Everything you need to know about identical twins, by an identical twin

Over my 18 years of being a twin, I’ve grown used to hearing people’s various theories about what it must be like to born with a real-life clone, most of which are often crazy and definitely not true. I have no idea where these ideas have even stemmed from, but whatever their origin, there’s a few things my twin and I would like to clear up.

We aren’t psychic

Sorry to disappoint the hundreds of people who ask me: “Can you read each other’s minds?” the moment they find out I’m a twin, but this has never happened with me and my sister. Once, we sneezed at the same time, but that’s about as creepy as it gets.

Every so often we’ll say virtually the same thing at the same time, but this is simply because we’ve spent our entire lives together- we’re bound to have picked up the same phrases and slang words. The same goes for the “If one of you falls over, can the other one feel pain?” question – the answer is no. So please refrain from punching my arm to see if my twin reacts, because I promise you, she won’t.

We do get jealous of each other

When someone shares everything with you, you can’t help but be bothered about things about their lives that seem to be better. I hate the fact that my sister’s nose is a tiny bit smaller than mine, for example. And in high school, if she ever got a higher grade than me on the same test, it was basically like I’d failed.

When my sister got her first boyfriend, then her second, I was convinced this meant she was one hundred times prettier than me. This made no sense, because we’re identical, and our only real difference is our hair colour (we both dye it opposite ends of the colour chart to avoid confusion on a major scale), but I still believed it. I might love her, but there’s been times I’ve secretly hated her a little bit, too.

The younger days

We’re not a fan of nicknames

Me and my twin spent our entire primary school lives being labeled “the twins” and wearing dolphin name badges to enable teachers and schoolmates to tell us apart. My sister was “the one with the chubby cheeks” and I was “the one with the big nose” to our innocent primary school chums. Thanks guys.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, as the years went on, the nicknames became more inventive. Twin one and twin two, Lemma (invented by a smart-arse who simply merged me, Laura, and my twins’ name, Emma, together and used this to refer to both of us), Tweedledee and Tweedledum… The list was endless. What was wrong with our normal names? Why, just because we were twins, did we get special nicknames? Thankfully, none of the nicknames stuck, with the only name remaining being the accidental “Emma”, whenever someone called me by my sister’s name.

Just because we’re close, it doesn’t mean you can’t be my friend

I went through the whole of high school without a best friend, and I can only presume it was because I was nearly always with my twin. It’s like people see us as one person – for birthdays, if one twin was invited, the other one automatically was too, so I imagine it works the same in the friend making process, and people just couldn’t be bothered to have two best friends.

Yes, me and my twin are close, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still value a best friend to talk about things other than family life and childhood acquaintances. It was only once we moved to different unis and people saw me as an individual person rather than a double act that I had my first non-twin best friend.

I can’t tell apart other twins

Me and my sister were put in the same form group for high school, along with another set of twins who were both boys (whoever had this ingenuous idea obviously hadn’t thought about my poor tutor’s confusion between the four twins in her class).

I will shamefully admit: for the whole five years I endured high school, I couldn’t tell the boys apart. It’s more that I couldn’t be bothered to learn than anything, which is a pathetic excuse coming from somebody who knows exactly how annoying it is to be mistaken for the wrong twin.

In Primary school

It’s just like having a best friend

You’re closer than you are with anyone else- even boyfriends struggle to match that super-closeness that twins have. There is literally nothing I haven’t told my twin. We have the best conversations; I tell her all of my secrets (and other people’s too, of course), but we can also spend hours in each other’s company in complete silence if conversation has been exhausted.

We’ve been known to have huge-scale biting, screaming and kicking arguments, but we rarely stay mad at one another for more than a day. There’s no boundaries I wouldn’t cross with her. We used to share a womb, for goodness sake, so you can’t really get any closer than that. So yes, we are basically the same person, but don’t ever let me hear you say that about us.

After the hair dye made an appearance

I’d like to be able to say that being a twin is a standout feature of my life, giving me the kind of novelty that’s worth the attention of the curious eye of the general public whenever I’m out with my sister. But it’s not. I’m sorry to inform everyone, but it’s actually pretty boring. Half the time, I forget I’m even a twin, and when I look at my sister, I can’t see myself in her face at all. So next time you’re tempted to ask a twin: “Can you read each other’s minds?”, don’t bother. Because they’ll probably also be sick of hearing it and the answer will pretty much always be “no”.