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Because my parents are humans who learn from error, I am an
only child.
With that said, I guess you could take this week's column as partially
coming clean, because for the past seven years of my life, I've been
telling
random acquaintances that I have a sister.
My fake sister's name is Susan. I have one photograph of “her,” which
is
actually a snapshot of myself and a young woman who posed with guests
at a
Hawaiian hotel I stayed at years ago. The girl in the photo is wearing
a
coconut bra, so that makes the lie even more ridiculous.
I made a character out of her to give the lie believable details. For
example, she was a psychology major and I hated her because she was
always
busting me for doing things like sneaking out and drawing faces on her
tampons. She looked nothing like me, except, as I already mentioned,
she was
also wearing a coconut bra.
I'm not really sure why I kept up this lie. I guess it was just one of
those lies for the sake of lying. Kinda like when you tell a new friend
you
enjoy Linkin Park solely to gauge his reaction. Or like that time my
doctor
told me, “Stinging? Yeah, that's normal.”
Anyway, this all kinda makes me wish I actually did have a sibling.
Specifically a twin. Partially because I'd have all that cool genetic
similarity crap and “love” or whatever, but mostly because of all the
pointless stunts we'd be able to pull off.
For example, I could have used a twin the other night. I was in a
popular
pharmaceutical chain buying SunChips and Spaghetto-O's because I just
got
paid and decided to splurge. As I was checking out, the girl working
behind
the counter was totally hitting on me. She was using all the classic
lines,
like “Hi,” and “Would you like a receipt?” and “Swipe the card again.
No,
the other way. Let me do it.” I kinda hung out for a second, throwing
out
lines of my own, but she was playing hard to get. So I decided to leave
after knocking down a jar of colorful rubber bracelets bearing phrases
like
“Independent,” and “Lame Trend.”
Sadly, after this true story happened, I wished I could do the
following.
Let's pretend I have a twin. I hate cheesy twin names like “Tim and
Jim” so
let's name my twin “Orlando.” It was at this point I would have called
Orlando to meet me in the pharmacy parking lot. I would make sure he
was
wearing something contrastingly different than I was wearing. Like a
sweater-vest. Or basically anything with pants. I would have had him go
inside the pharmacy to buy almost
the exact same thing I bought. Like
Beefaroni and Pringles. For good measure, I would have made him wear
something stupid like a fake mustache. A blond fake mustache.
As Orlando would enter the store, I'm sure the girl behind the counter
would have believed (stupidly) that I had returned in a costume. I'd
wait
until I saw Orlando checking out, and then I'd walk back into the store
and
say, “You know what? I do
need a receip—what the hell?”
At this point we'd perform a pre-scripted, well-rehearsed exchange,
saying
sentence fragments simultaneously, as though we're having the exact
same
reaction to encountering a lookalike.
It would be something generic like, “You're...! But I'm...! But
you're...!
But we're...! How can this...? I have trouble sleeping on my left
side...!
I hate dachshunds!”
Then we'd both pretend to faint before slowly getting up and wandering
out
awkwardly together.
This is kinda a dream situation. Naturally I'd use my twin for all of
the
obvious situations, such as test-taking in college (I think we all know
where I'm going with this!). Of course by “this” I mean whenever
I'm taking
a test that I knew would be very difficult, I'd have my twin run in,
claiming to be me from the future. He'd say something like “I need you
or
the world will asplode!” And the professor would pretty much have no
choice
to oblige that.
©2005 Tim Landry
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