There are five sets of twins in my family.

Insert the Arkansas jokes here.

Seriously. Five sets.

My mother is an identical twin. Her mother was an identical. Her mom’s twin had a set of fraternal twins. One of her other children had a set of identicals. And my wife and I have identical twin grandsons.

Growing up around that, I really did just think that lots of lookalikes around me was perfectly normal. So, when my wife called me to tell me our daughter was pregnant with twins, my response was, “Oh, OK.”

Even she couldn’t understand my lack of surprise.

Unless you’ve been around twins, you cannot know the unusual and interesting things that orbit them.

All of my life, my mother and her twin sported the same hairstyle, wore similar or the same outfits and shoes, and drove similar cars. Mistaken identity was common.

When I was a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, mom worked at a savings and loan on a corner downtown. Her twin worked in the revenue office (where you go to get a driver’s license) nearby. People would go to the savings and loan to get money for their license, walk around the corner, and see the same lady in the revenue office.

It was similar to an episode of Green Acres where Oliver would go to different places in Hooterville and people would mispronounce the same word. The look on his face mirrored the look of those who swore they just saw that lady in another office.

Other interesting things happened. One day, mom filled up at the gas station (back when full service was the norm). She drove away. A bit later, my aunt pulled in with her husband. The attendant asked if her husband knew she was with another man.

There’s a bond with twins the rest of us don’t even come close to having with other humans. Call it ESP, a cosmic connection, or whatever you’d like, but twins are in tune with each other in a way that’s impossible to explain otherwise.

When one isn’t feeling well or is in distress, the other one knows it. How? I have no idea, but I’ve seen evidence of this over and over.

“I need to call her,” my mom would say. “Why?” I’d ask. “Something’s not right,” she’d answer.

Mom would call, and sure enough, her twin was sick or having a problem of some kind. Same in reverse. How they know these things is beyond me, but they do. I’ve also talked to other twins who claim the same mental connectivity. You can scoff, but it’s a fact.

My grandmother and her twin had the same connection. Another connection they had was what TV shows (or as they called them, “my programs”) they watched. And they had to watch them together. If they couldn’t be in the same room, they would call each other on the phone and stay on there discussing what was happening until the show ended.

I learned early on to never, ever call my grandmother when The Price is Right was on. The line would be busy. If you called right before the show started and she hadn’t gotten on the line with her twin yet, she’d hang up on you.

“Don’t you know my program’s about to come on?” she’d ask before forcefully putting the phone back in the cradle.

Watching our twin grandsons grow up has been an interesting thing to see. They were the first twins in my family that I was able to observe behavior from birth. They have many of the same interests, think the same, and act a lot alike.

I get it. Genetically, that makes sense. When you’re a carbon copy of someone else, it’s more likely to develop in the same way. But even though they’re identical twins, they have very different personalities. Just like my mom and her twin. But that can change. As they aged, my mother seemed to take the more dominate role and my aunt the back seat.

Another interesting aspect of twins arose when genetic testing came around. As a gift for my mom and dad, I bought them subscriptions to an online DNA site. The idea was to learn about our ancestors and maybe find new kinfolk we didn’t know we had. Both of those happened. One thing I didn’t expect was a notification I received about my DNA.

When my mom’s twin’s son (my cousin) joined the same site, it showed he was my half-brother.

Identical twins really and truly are identical.

It is interesting that I have a cousin who is even closer biologically to me than any other person on the planet besides my sister.

If you have another Arkansas joke, here would be the place for it.

 

© 2026 John Moore

John’s new book, Write of Passage: Volume 3, is available on Amazon. Write to John at TheCountryWriter.com.