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  • Haley Haskin
    • May 30, 2018
    • 9 min read

The Life of an Identical Twin


“Are you twins?” “Wait, wait, wait, who is older? Do you hold it against your sister?” “Which one of you is smarter?” “Which one is the evil twin?” “Did you ever switch around and try to confuse your parents?” “How am I ever going to learn to tell you apart?” “What is the difference between you, there has to be a difference?” “Do you guys have the same birthday?”

Yes we are twins. I am one minute older (C-section). No, I do not hold 60 seconds against her. We are equally smart and neither one of us is evil. We never tried to confuse our parents, because 1. To them we look totally different and it wouldn’t have worked, and 2. Purposefully trying to confuse people loses its excitement after people confuse you for your whole life anyways. Most people can start to tell our faces and personalities apart after a couple months of knowing us. The difference between us? Some people say our voices, some say the way we walk, some say our eyes, some say our nose, some say our mouth, and some say our eyebrows, and some people say that Heather has a freckle on her neck and I don’t, but if you ask me that is way too hard to look for. So if we were to base this on everyone’s techniques at once, nothing about us looks the same. And do we have the same birthday? I’ll give this one a minute.

I have been a twin, well yes, my whole life. Actually, more than my whole life if you count the 7 months in the making (twins = 2 months premature). In case you didn’t know, my twin sister’s name is Heather. Haley and Heather. Heather and Haley. Say it how you like – everyone thinks a different name should go first. We aren’t really that freaky, except we used to get the hiccups at the same time and lose the same teeth on opposite sides together. And I’m apparently the only one who could successfully tickle Heather. We always wondered why people thought we had this something they called a secret twin language too. We didn’t think we did because when we talked to each other it sounded like English to us. So we tried to make one up. It did not go as easily as planned, and we quickly gave up that endeavor.

The History of our Twinship: A Bitter Beginning

Though we have gotten along well for as long as I can remember, we actually used to hate being twins. We didn’t like that we had to compromise on one birthday cake and share what each of us thought should be our special day. We didn’t like that we had to share every toy we got. We didn’t like being dressed alike. We didn’t like when people got us confused, or asked us what we titled “dumb twin questions,” as seen above. And we hated being grouped together in one unit all the time: “HaleyHeather! Come here and look at this!” Uhm, excuse me? Who is “HaleyHeather?” That sounds like one person and we are two people. We hated that when people didn’t know how to tell us apart, they just called us “twin” or “the twins” and asked us to respond to that because they didn’t want to take the effort to learn us apart and call us by our real names.

Competition

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Another thing that was always frustrating was how much our similarities resulted in competition. We are extremely alike. We both love performing, we both love being organized and clean, we both loved school and got straight A’s. (And to be honest, maybe the reason we did both maintain high standards for ourselves is because of this unspoken competition to always keep up with one another). We both went to the same school, majored in the same things, and even lived in the same dorm room. Though we didn’t love this competition produced by these similarities, what we didn’t like even more was that neither of us would ever get picked for anything (teams, roles, vacation buddies) because no one wanted to leave the other one out, so they left us both out!

As we got a little older, and began to express these frustrations, our closest friends and family learned to become sensitive to all this. They made sure we each got a toy of our own, tried their very hardest to use the right names, didn’t force us to dress alike, tried to treat us “unfairly” as we requested, and let us each pick what type of birthday cake we wanted (though usually we wanted the same kind anyways – I think it was the principle at the time, being indignant and stubborn at eleven years old.) We even had our own rooms at a few points. And that was all good.

But in the past ten years, we have finally learned to accept that people are going to be mixing us up and grouping us together until the day we die. And if we try to be bitter about it every time, bitter is all we will ever be! Trying to not be twins when we are, is like putting a square peg in a round hole. We decided that if we’re going to be twins for our entire lives – and I’m pretty sure we didn’t have much of a choice here – we might as well embrace all that comes with being a twin. So we’ve given up the twin resentment, and grown it into a full-fledged twinship friendship!

Taking Advantage of the Twinship

Some of the times we accidentally dressed alike...

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Now we are using our twinship to our advantage. We are by default, best friends who have wildly similar thoughts and interests. Can we read each other’s minds? No. Do we have “twin telepathy?” No. But think of it this way: We are best friends, who have been nearly inseparable since the day we were born. Our brains have been growing and learning in exact the same environment for 23 years, and we have 23 years of experience and inside jokes together. We are working with 23 years of the same nature and nurture here! Think about how similar our thought patterns must be! So when we do finish each other’s sentences, it isn’t because we have some magic twin power, it is just because we have developed such similar ideas and familiarity with the ways each other thinks and can virtually get into each other’s heads.

Heather is probably the easiest person in the entire world to talk to about my problems, because she can directly apply herself to what I’m dealing with. Without a doubt her very similar brain, that has been nurtured in the same way mine has for 23 years, has experienced the same thoughts I have. She can take the thoughts and feelings right out of my head and put them into words for me. And I can do the same for her. Now that to me is a pretty cool phenomenon! Wow, maybe it is a magic, however natural, twin power.

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A Dynamic Duo

Contrary to our childhood and pre-teen years, we have since taken ultimate advantage of our twinship. Halloween costumes have included: Fred and George Weasley, Lizzie Mcguire and Isabella, Phineas and Ferb, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, Chip and Dale, and more. We have framed ourselves as the ultimate dynamic duo in the performing arts world. I remember when we were eight, we put together a revue from Annie the musical for our church – Heather was the orphan Annie and I was adopted Annie. We played the twins in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown and Hairspray in high school. We freaked out an audience pretty authentically in a new works horror piece in college, where we played evil twins. We are still waiting for Parent Trap the musical to be a thing, because you’re wrong if you don’t think we acted out every scene of that movie in the living room at the age of 3, and have full knowledge of the secret handshake, and incredible fencing skills (all practiced with the tiger light sabers we got at the circus).

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Professionally, I would love to work with Heather on a big performance project one day. I can create and produce things to an average degree on my own. But all our lives, our normally alright choreography and production skills have come alive when we work them together. Everything brilliant I’ve ever created really was created with Heather. Working together just adds a spice, an inspiration, a new, but at the same time very familiar perspective. I think if I look into this too much I will ruin it, so I will stop here! Bottom line, I work well on my own, but I work to an exceptional degree when I’m partnered with my twin!

Why Handicap a Super-Strength?

And for this reason, it has kind of always bothered me when teachers and other higher ups looked down on us for not separating our lives as much as we could have. They always tried to put us in separate classes in grade school, and convince us to take different career paths, so there wouldn’t be so much competition and we could learn to be apart. But as I said above, we thrive on this competition! Because of this competition we are constantly raising our standards and staying in check with ourselves. And sometimes there is no place for competition, when we can work together to create new things as well as we do. Why would it make sense to cut off an outlet that is so productive, if slightly abnormal? If you had a superpower, would you want to get rid of it? If you could fly, would you want to cut off your wings? Well, being a twin is my super power, and I’m going to use it!

Security Blankets and Finding Individuality

It may be true that we are something of a security blanket for one another. However it is also true that we have been away from each other for months at a time and have been very okay discovering who we are without each other. Going to Disney on my first college program was the first time I had been away from Heather for six months. And I loved it! I loved finding out who I was as an individual. That was something I had never experienced before. People didn’t even know who Heather was! I was just Haley. Not to be confused with anyone else. And at her summer job she was just Heather. Not to be confused with anyone else. And that was amazing, and freeing, and beautiful, and outrageously new to me! But it is also amazing and beautiful that we get to be each other’s twin! At the present moment we both happen to be in the same spot, working for Disney. But she will be getting married and moving to St. Louis next month, so why not take advantage of our time together as much as possible?

Once a Twin, Always a Twin

As we prepare for Heather to get married and be a real grown up, we are still getting just as mixed up as ever, only instead of by our classmates, our coworkers. We are still adult fighting over the sacred Harry Potter books we never wanted to split up, and sadly sorting out the DVDs we always shared. It is sad to be separating such a shared and special childhood. But we really are never that far apart. It won’t be too terribly different, because our relationship has always mostly consisted of unspoken words, because they don’t really need to be spoken. We just come back together when we can, and we understand.

Being a twin has become such a massive part of my life – something I am proud of, and something I wouldn’t change for the world! How cool is that? There is someone else in the world that looks just like me! As much as I may try to individualize myself, I can’t deny that my twin sister will always be a part of me. That is just the life I was born into. Though some people may view that as a burden, I see it as an honor, a specialty, and a more extraordinary way to experience an ordinary life. Because of Heather, I will forever be asked “which one I am.” Because of Heather, I will always respond to both her name and mine, and our adopted name twin. Because of Heather, I will always have a fun fact to share with the room when everyone else is just double jointed in their elbow! Because of Heather, we can do a mean double cartwheel trick at all parties. Because of Heather, I will never not cry when I watch The Parent Trap. Because of Heather, I will never not have a best friend who understands everything. Heather will always be the Isabella to my Lizzie, the George to my Fred, and the Annie to my Hallie. And because of Heather, we both have a lifelong, totally cool, and wildly popular superpower!

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