You Both Can't Be Smart!

Do twins really have the same intelligence? Many people seem to believe that this is not true, that one of us has to be the “dumb” twin.

Although many people hold this misconception, this is not true for Bri and me. It’s actually freakishly weird how similar in intelligence we are. Our similar intelligence caused a lot of problems for us throughout grade school, middle school, and even high school. We were usually in the same classes, but sometimes we just had these classes at different times with the same teacher. We would have similar assignments and many of our papers were similar even if we never even read each other’s before! Because of this, many teachers assumed we were writing papers for each other and cheating, but this wasn’t true at all. I guess we just think a lot alike. It wasn’t our fault that the school scheduled us for the same classes!

It was even worse when they believed we cheated on quizzes and tests…from across the room. How ridiculous is that? One teacher even went as far as putting us in separate rooms to take a test. The results were pretty much identical and we got the same answers wrong. Surprising? I think not. She was pretty blown away but the results though, especially since she thought she could catch us cheating. She just didn’t understand how we could get the same answers right and wrong in different rooms. She even questioned telepathy as our way to communicate throughout tests. She was…different. My mom got calls home about these issues every single year. She had the same question that we had, “How could they cheat from across the room?” And no, it is really not telepathy!

Maybe the teachers should have realized that we study together for tests. If we’re focusing on the same information, we’re more likely to remember the same things. However, during Freshman year of high school, we had one English teacher who was convinced we had to be cheating. She took random points off from papers that she thought were too similar. She even went as far as saying we weren’t allowed to study together! It was a little ridiculous.

I guess some people just don’t understand how we can think so much alike. Anyone who has been in a psych class knows that children who have the exact same genetics and live in the same exact environment develop similarly. Why would intelligence be any different?

Picture from: http://www.treehugger.com/bookworm-photo.jpg

Sinner vs. Saint?

We’ve heard this one a million times. “Since you’re twins, who’s the bad one and who’s the good one?”

To be honest, we’ve never fallen into the good vs. evil stereotype.  I actually think it’s quite silly. Who says that one twin has to be good all the time and the other one has to be bad? That seems a little crazy. I wonder if that is really possible. Can one person really be good all the time? Can they be bad?

When Bri and I are asked this question, we always give each other the same look and say, “Well one of us really isn’t bad.” We’re not lying either. If we ever do anything bad (which really wouldn’t be considered bad by many people’s standards), we both usually do it. I mean my idea of doing something crazy is going out past 10:00 pm when I have class the next day or just missing class during the week. To some people this isn’t a big deal, but Bri and I rarely do this and it is actually very out of character for us.

I’m not saying that we’re both good 100% of the time. Everyone has done something they are not particularly proud of or have just been unnecessarily mean to someone else. The reciprocal is also true. We’re not bad 100% of the time. Like everyone else, we’re not perfect and have personalities that are a mix between the two. Just because Bri and I are twins doesn’t mean that one of us is necessarily nicer than the other.

For instance, there are times when Brianna will drive away in the morning when I’m taking too long to leave for school or I will throw her clothes all over the floor, but there are also times when I’ll help her figure out math problems she doesn’t understand or she’ll proofread my work. We can both be really nice or even mean to each other depending on the day. In a way, we’re both the “good” and “bad” twin.

So, in our case, there is no such thing as the good or bad twin. Depending on the day, we both display characteristics of the evil twin or the good twin (even though it’s usually good). J



image from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyhbdOn333CD1TNnfBPzwlBsJpAW_OZY9VhRGZzYOEUmzLcr3ugWWwAgDbOLCLCg0PXC0xWhgRr3JCCeugmrOoeoMsXLqyQ9d-c3976eHjoY54_8-A7v12UeKWxQlcKzk2PA3yuVQu1Hy9/s320/Good_versus_Evil_by_curua.jpg

Attached at the Hip

Do twins really do everything together? Why yes, we really do. I mean, not everything.  That would be pretty weird. However, at least 99% of the things that I do, Brianna does. If I go out to dinner or to the gym, Brianna comes too.  I mean, we live together, have almost all of the same classes, we go to the same events, we have the same friends, and we’re even in the same sorority. The list goes on and on!

(We were even voted Dynamic Duo in our sorority)

There really never is a time when Brianna and I aren’t together. Every once and a while one of us will go out a date or work on school projects with a group of people, but that’s pretty much it. Tonight, however, was an exception to our typical “attached at the hip” status.

It might seem weird that Bri and I are together almost 24/7, but to us, it feels even stranger when we’re apart.  Tonight, for instance, I had an anatomy test that I had to take which I was not excited about.  Brianna, on the other hand, went to ribboning in for our sorority. She got to get all dressed up to go to a ceremony to welcome all of the new pledges. I got stuck studying all the bones on the body.

This was the first event that Bri went to that I couldn’t. It may not seem like a big deal, but it felt very weird. It’s really an indescribable feeling and I really don’t know how to explain it to anyone else. It’s really not a bad feeling though. I think it’s good to get a sense of independence from each other sometimes, even if it is only for a few hours. I think some people forget that we’re separate people since we spend so much time together doing the same things. We don’t mind being referred to as “the twins,” as most people call us, but it’s nice to know that there are people realize we are not the same. So, it might have been a good step to do different things this evening. Maybe we’ll gain some sense of independence. I mean, we can’t live and do everything together forever!

Seeing Brianna and I separated is really a rare occurrence. So, do twins really do everything together? Besides the slight breaks we have from each other, we truly are “attached at the hip.”

Two Peas in a Pod

Bri and I are always asked if there is a trick to telling us apart or if we have any distinct features that make us look different from each other. I think the answer is actually pretty simple: we don’t look alike. I was talking to Brianna about this the other day because everyone at work is having trouble telling us apart since we have to wear the same uniform. I think she explained it best when she said, “When I look into the mirror, I don’t see Britt staring back at me. I see myself. “

So the question is, do identical twins look exactly the same? I personally don’t think so. Like Brianna said, I always see myself when I look at pictures or in the mirror, not Bri. When we tell anyone that we don’t think that we look alike at all, they usually look at us like we’re crazy.  I guess we just see ourselves differently than everybody else does.

I personally think that as we’ve gotten older, we don’t look very similar anymore. When we were little, it was a different story. We looked almost exactly the same and even I can’t tell us apart in some of the pictures!  (My Mom can’t either!) I guess my family would paint our nails different colors so they wouldn’t get confused and mistake Bri for me or vice versa. We also had t-shirts with our names on them that said, “I’m Brittany. That’s my twin sister Brianna.” I think it’s pretty silly, but I guess it worked for them!

Now that we’re older, I think it’s funny that people can’t tell us apart. Sometimes other students will start talking to me about a test or quiz and I have no idea what they are talking about.  After staring at them dumbfounded for quite some time, I usually realize that they think I’m Bri. Recently we’ve both resorted to saying hi to people we don’t know to avoid explaining that we are twins and to also spare the feelings of the people we’ve ignored because we didn’t know them. Life seems much easier that way!

However, when I talk to my friends, they say that when they first met us we looked completely identical, but now they can tell us apart.  They say that it’s easy now and they don’t know why they couldn’t tell before. I’ve noticed that when I’ve know someone for a long time, they can easily tell us apart. I’m not sure why this happens, but it is very common.

To answer the question, to other people we look exactly the same. However, to Brianna and I, we feel as though we look like completely different people.

Switch It Up

Anytime someone discovers that Brianna and I are twins, it is almost always guaranteed that a person will ask, “So, do you two ever switch places and play pranks on other people?” It is a question that I’ve been asked frequently and I really do wonder why so many people think that this is a common practice for twins to do.  I always question, “Do I look like I would do something like that? Or is it something a lot of people just assume about identical twins?”

I wish I had an interesting story to tell, like Brianna going out on a date with a past boyfriend of mine to see if he would notice the difference or I took a math test for Brianna because she wasn’t doing very good in the class, but I don’t. To tell the truth, Bri and I have never really thought about switching places.  However, when we were five years old, there was an exception. What we did was, in reality, pretty cruel.

When we were little, my great-grandma, who I called Nonny, used to take care of us when my mom went to work.  Bri and I would wear the same outfit every day in different colors and my mom would tell my Nonny who was wearing which color in the morning when she dropped us off. Bri and I were not known to misbehave, but one day we decided that it would be a good idea to switch our shirts without my Nonny’s knowledge. After she fell for it the first time, Bri and I got a kick out of tricking my great-grandma. I do not remember this since we were five at the time, but I’ve been told countless times that Bri and I really found it funny to confuse my Nonny and we continued to do so until my mom found out. We were in A LOT of trouble then and soon stopped. That was the last time Bri and I have ever switched places.

To answer the question, yes, I have switched places with my twin. However, it was for a very short period of time and we have not tried it since. I don’t know if we ever will. It might be pretty entertaining to try sometime, but I really can’t picture us doing that again. I can’t speak for other twins, but in my experience, switching places really wasn’t for me.

Hello Everyone!

My name is Brittany and I’ve had the greatest best friend for 19 years. She is Brianna, my identical twin sister. This blog is all about us, but more importantly the variety of questions we’ve been asked about being twins over the years. These questions range from interesting to downright ridiculous. Also, I have heard many different ideas that people have about twins. I’m going to address some of these questions and perceptions based on the experiences that I have personally had being a twin. Enjoy!