It’s a simple matter of human biology….

by

“So how old are you?” exclaimed the friendly lady to a cheerful twin girl.

“I am six,” she replied with a smile tickling her lips, “but mummy says I am ever so tall for my age.”

“And what about you little man,” questioned the same friendly lady to a shorter twin boy.

“I’m six as well,” he snorted barely concealing his annoyance, and then together in a weird Jedward way my children chimed…

“We are twins.”

“Oh, how lovely,” sang the friendly old lady who had befriended us in the park, and turning to me she with a look of unashamed joy she cried “aren’t you a marvellously lucky mummy, are they identical?”

Stop the clock.

Lucky to me means being able to put a pound on the lotto and win back six million, lucky to me means finding a heavy iron horseshoe which can be used as a weapon as some ruffian is about to try to snatch your bag…

It is not always the term I used to describe having twins.

When they were both learning to live life without nappies, I spent days ankle-deep in human waste and I wouldn’t say lucky was the first phrase that sprang to mind.  When they began to talk they always had someone to argue with, and lucky was not how one felt.

They always have someone to play with, and on the rare occasion that happens happily the sense of relief washes over me like a rain shower rather than the happy dance I associate with luck.

Blessed, for my beautiful healthy offspring, yes.

Lucky; not always.

But moving on; I concede that I am marvellous, happy to chalk that one up to the friendly old lady in the park.

Which leads me nicely on to the question of identical…

Let’s examine the evidence.

Twin girl, is the tallest in her class, she has beautiful brown wavy hair, is impeccably behaved, worries about being accidentally naughty and loves to spend hours writing groundbreaking novels which often accidentally plagiarises the three little pigs.

Twin boy on the other hand is a little on the stumpy side; with a mischievous grin that can get him out of a whole heap of trouble.  Known to push the rules and stretch the truth he can be tamed with a particularly complex Maths puzzle or access to a life supply of Lego.

Oh, and he has a PENIS.

Twin girl is missing that extra addition to her frame.  She doesn’t have a little fire hose to urinate through and has to contend, like the rest of us ladies, with sitting on the toilet to pee. (Apart from that one time when she tried to wee like a man and found herself standing ankle-deep in human waste.)

They are not identical…

However before I had a chance to educate the friendly old lady in the park on basic human biology, twin girl quickly intervened with a sweet reply,

“I am a girl, he is a boy, silly,” she gently refuted, “identical is when you are both the same and I can’t wee standing up.”

Glad she cleared that one up for me.

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50 thoughts on “It’s a simple matter of human biology….”

  7. Twin Girl has obviously got it all worked out. This reminds me of my Mum phoning me to tell me that my cousin had given birth to boy-girl twins. ‘The twins have been born, a boy and a girl. They aren’t identical.’ She couldn’t work out why I was laughing.

  8. Don’t you just love crazy old ladies in the park? I always find it enjoyable when some grandma refers to my daughter as a little boy. I love Twin Girl’s response though. Might adopt a similar attitude myself next time someone tries to gender-reassign The Baby x

  11. I have a twin brother and sister and people were always asking me if they were identical. Sometimes I answered, ‘no, the girl has long hair.’ Usually they would understand that my answer was absurd. But then they’d ask again. ‘Seriously, are they identical?’ Even when I said that one is a boy and one is a girl, often they didn’t get it.

  13. I wish I had a pound every time someone had asked me that! I would be so very rich now.
    Lady “are they identical?”
    Me “no they are a girl and a boy”
    Lady “yes, but are they identical?”
    Oh god, kill me now!

  15. Wonderful story and brilliantly written. 🙂

    I guy I know recently became a grandparent. He was so proud when he told me his daughter was having identical twins. (He’s got an identical twin himself so it runs in the family). I congratulated him and asked if they were boys or girls. He replied ‘yep, identical twins. A boy and a girl’. He really should know better!

  19. PMSL at this.
    My favourite is when people say of my 4 ‘Oh don’t they look alike?’
    Yes, that’ll be because they have the same mother and father….

  20. haha I think I would have answered “yes this one’s a very convincing transvestite isn’t he” but then perhaps thats why little old ladies avoid me in the park!

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  27. Brilliant! I can’t wait for ours to be sarcastic to people who ask that frankly very stupid question. I am always annoyingly polite when I point out that boy-girl twins sort of aren’t identical. In the meantime you could market that as ring-tone: I’d buy it, & play it back every time I’m asked that dumb question!

  28. Except as the Mummy has just pointed out to me it’s very easy, as parents of twins, to be wise in hindsight. It’s possible that even we might have made that mistake Before. Apparently even Shakespeare made that mistake.

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