While unpacking my suitcase in an empty college dorm, I realized I was missing something. I had remembered my blue A-line skirt and pink polka-dot pajamas, but I had left at home something bigger, something more valuable: my twin. This would be the longest my brother and I had ever been apart, and though I constantly claimed to hate him, I felt incomplete without him.
During my first week at COSMOS (California State Summer School for Math and Science), I thought a lot about this momentous separation. During icebreakers, my "fun fact" was invariably that I had a devilish twin brother, and I talked to my new friends every day about how happy I was to escape him. However, while I gloated over my unfamiliar independence, I was actually establishing myself as Henry's twin instead of as Sophie Goldman - myself.
This all changed when I was forced to socialize on my own, without any preordained icebreakers. Sitting at the back of a stuffy school bus filled with fifty screeching math-whizzes, I was compelled to start conversations with the strangers around me. Twisting around on the sticky leather seats, I began cracking jokes and telling riddles, embarrassing myself shamelessly. I stopped relying on my twinness to entertain people and began telling my own stories. In fact, I stopped talking about my twin altogether. Instead, I made puns, solved riddles, and ran excitedly to class. Essentially, I behaved like my brother: loud, social, uninhibited. Rather than observing politely and nodding where appropriate, checking my adventurous urges, I shrieked ecstatically at stories and climbed trees, always out of breath from laughing.
By channeling my brother's bold and shameless confidence, I realized just how deeply I cared about my twin - and just how deeply he had shaped me my entire life. He had helped me pull out baby teeth, eagerly offering various primitive or violent ideas and more than once trying to stick his little hands in my mouth; he had consoled me when I lost my Barbies, remorseful that he had cut their hair or ripped their heads off; and he had taught me to enjoy myself, demonstrating on a regular basis multiple techniques for avoiding work. I did not hate him, as I had continually claimed, but loved him.
Throughout high school, I had been known as the annoyingly nerdy girl who studied hours into the night and broke down when given a B. He was always the loud, funny, disrespectful one - the risk-taker - while I was invariably the quiet, studious, polite sister. When separated from my twin, I finally expressed my quirkiness and sense of humor. At COSMOS, I learned to take risks, to be bizarre, and to have fun. By the time I returned home, I appreciated and cherished my twin more than ever, despite his teenage-boy temperament. I had learned to combine who I was as an individual with who I was as a twin, and I had discovered my own voice.
During my first week at COSMOS (California State Summer School for Math and Science), I thought a lot about this momentous separation. During icebreakers, my "fun fact" was invariably that I had a devilish twin brother, and I talked to my new friends every day about how happy I was to escape him. However, while I gloated over my unfamiliar independence, I was actually establishing myself as Henry's twin instead of as Sophie Goldman - myself.
This all changed when I was forced to socialize on my own, without any preordained icebreakers. Sitting at the back of a stuffy school bus filled with fifty screeching math-whizzes, I was compelled to start conversations with the strangers around me. Twisting around on the sticky leather seats, I began cracking jokes and telling riddles, embarrassing myself shamelessly. I stopped relying on my twinness to entertain people and began telling my own stories. In fact, I stopped talking about my twin altogether. Instead, I made puns, solved riddles, and ran excitedly to class. Essentially, I behaved like my brother: loud, social, uninhibited. Rather than observing politely and nodding where appropriate, checking my adventurous urges, I shrieked ecstatically at stories and climbed trees, always out of breath from laughing.
By channeling my brother's bold and shameless confidence, I realized just how deeply I cared about my twin - and just how deeply he had shaped me my entire life. He had helped me pull out baby teeth, eagerly offering various primitive or violent ideas and more than once trying to stick his little hands in my mouth; he had consoled me when I lost my Barbies, remorseful that he had cut their hair or ripped their heads off; and he had taught me to enjoy myself, demonstrating on a regular basis multiple techniques for avoiding work. I did not hate him, as I had continually claimed, but loved him.
Throughout high school, I had been known as the annoyingly nerdy girl who studied hours into the night and broke down when given a B. He was always the loud, funny, disrespectful one - the risk-taker - while I was invariably the quiet, studious, polite sister. When separated from my twin, I finally expressed my quirkiness and sense of humor. At COSMOS, I learned to take risks, to be bizarre, and to have fun. By the time I returned home, I appreciated and cherished my twin more than ever, despite his teenage-boy temperament. I had learned to combine who I was as an individual with who I was as a twin, and I had discovered my own voice.
