Believe it or not, the two handsome men you see are twins (That's me on the left, Kyle on the right). We may not look a lot alike, but we are twins, we just aren't identical. Kyle was my best friend growing up and still is. From spending so much time with Kyle as a child, I developed a necessity to differentiate myself from my brother and even other people.
It began when we were in elementary school, going over to a friend's house. Back then, our friend could only have 5 friends over at a time. There was an exception according to his mom: the twins, Cale and Kyle, counted as one friend. It was nice, both for our friends who got a free extra person, and to us, who didn't have to get split up. But it still felt dehumanizing. We were lumped up all the time. We were known as "the Seis boys" to every adult. They all recognized us as "one of those Seis boys" but they always had to ask which one was which.
Starting at a young age I would make choices to differentiate myself from Kyle. It's impossible to be completely unique, I knew that. But I'd just be a little different. We developed different but similar hobbies. Kyle started skateboarding, I started roller-blading. I developed a different body type by going to the gym and lifting weights often, while Kyle would skateboard or play basketball in the drive way, staying more lean. Eventually, we went in opposite directions to go to college. Kyle went to Milwaukee, and I went to Minneapolis, our hometown lying directly in the middle.
My obsession with being a little different, a little unique still carries over to my relationships with other people. When I go out to eat, I will not order the same thing someone else has already ordered. If I'm going somewhere with friends and I'm wearing the same color shirt, I go back and change. But most importantly, it's what made me choose to be an English major. Literature is open to all sorts of interpretation, and through writing I can express anything I observe about myself or the world. Even if being unique is impossible since we are always-already subjects in ideology, at least I can fool myself for a little bit.
Great post! As I was reading I was comparing my relationship with my older brother who is also my best friend. I was always looking up to him thinking that he was the coolest person in the world. I wonder how our relationship would be different if we were twins, if I would take on the same dynamic as your brother and you. One thing that I absolutely loved about having two older brothers was how competitive it made me. I would always want to push myself to get to their level.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. I have two friends that are twins and I have never thought to ask them how being a twin could have such a large impact on every choice they make today. They hang out with the same group of friends as they go to the same university, but they are involved in different activities and majors. I also thought this post was interesting because you read stories about 60 year old twins who still dress the same and are still involved in the same hobbies. I wonder if female twins are more or less likely to continue in the same areas of interest throughout life.
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