Pamela’s bio or The Twin that Got Stuck up the Tree
Plato’s Aristophanes said humans originally had four arms, four legs and a single head made of two faces. The Greek god Zeus feared the power of these double-humans and split them in half, condemning them to search forever for the other half.
Most people use this story to explain the search for soul mates. Some of us don’t have to search—we begin life as identical twins.
My sister and I met for lunch the other day and I arrived first, so was shown to a table. My sister came inside five minutes later. I saw my waitress stop and do a double take. She looked back at where I was sitting, then at my sister. “Now that’s just weird,” she said.
Janet and I call it “the freak factor.” Most of you can walk into an establishment and get a smile and a greeting. We get double takes and stares, and almost always, that million-dollar question—”Are you twins?”
The extra attention was annoying as we were growing up, especially when a teacher thought my dominant right brain could grasp higher-level biology concepts. “Your twin sister does very well in this class,” she told me.
Yes, Janet excelled in the sciences, math and Powder Puff football, while I tried to duck phys Ed classes to write poems or work on the school newspaper. I was “the prissy twin” and Janet was the “tom-boy.”
I was also the twin who got stuck up the tree. I was 10 when I scrambled up an old oak tree in our neighborhood, following Janet and our best friend, Amy. I clutched each branch as they left it, climbing steadily, even as rough bark scraped my tender knees. Scraped and scratched, I finally sat on a sturdy, high branch. I peered across the street with a new perspective. I was on top of the world!
Janet and Amy soon lost interest and clambered down, but I made the mistake of looking down before my descent. The world tilted and spun like Dorothy Hamill. Janet hurried to get Mom and she tried to talk me down, as did a couple of other moms and dads, but their voices were far away and ineffective. There was no way I was letting go of that branch. Dusk fell over the neighborhood, shadows lengthened, goose bumps rose on my chilled bare legs.
Janet finally found Amy’s teenage brother, who climbed up, grabbed me around the waist and hauled me down.
My sister says I was also “the mean twin.” Because we had identical clothes and toys, if I found one of my toys broken, she said I would pick up her toy and claim it was mine. Or so she says. I remember only one time that I picked up one of our walkie talkies, pulled the antenna up, then walked through a doorway and snapped it off. I looked down at the sharp, metal antenna stump in dismay. I walked back and snatched up the other walkie talkie, leaving the broken one in its place. Our names weren’t on them, so really, it could have been mine.
Moving through life as an identical twin means walking through milestones with a built-in best friend. It also means ignoring raised eyebrows and fielding odd questions like, “How do you tell each other apart?”
Most of all, being a twin means you’ll never be stuck up a tree without someone caring you’re up there and finding a way to get you down.
