Who knew?

I've decided that having a step-daughter is kinda like having a sister.  I know its not that way for some people but Little J is just cooler than those other step daughters.  When I start really getting upset that I don't get to spend as much time with S as I'm used to, little J pops in and gives me a taste of my relationship with S when she was 6 and I was 9. 

First of all, Little J thinks I'm awesome.  6 year old S thought I was pretty awesome too.  Who am I kidding, 20 something S still thinks I'm awesome.

Little J NEVER shuts up. As long as its just the two of us in the car or in the house she will chat ALL. DAY. LONG. When S and I were younger we could start chatting when we woke up and a few hours later we'd still be in the same spot where we had managed to lead into story after story of things that were important to our 6 and 9 year old selves. Little J does the same thing...that kid does not have a secret in the world she hasn't felt compelled to tell me. 

S and I used to get in trouble at night for talking too much.  We went to bed at 8:00 every night promptly after the theme song from COPS played through the ending credits.  Papa C did not give bed time warnings or warnings of any kind for that matter and we KNEW that the ending of COPS was our cue to get our butts to bed. We would take ourselves to bed and that girl would not stop talking.  Even though we would talk to each other all day every day we still had things to say for hours when it was time for bed until one of us finally said "I'm going to sleep. Stop talking."

Little J and I stayed at my parents house this weekend and slept in S's bed since she was gone.  I almost forgot it wasn't S chatting away keeping me awake until 2:30 in the morning in our childhood bedroom.  Add to that the grinding of the teeth and snoring as she slept, Little J transformed into S until it was time to wake up and she turned down eating breakfast.  The fact that she turned down a meal was my only indication that she was in fact not my sister.

 

I have a twin...

It all started 10 holy crap…really years ago.  I was at a high school graduation my senior year in a massive event center, I looked to my right and about 2 sections over I made eye contact with a girl that made me think I was looking in a mirror.  I kid you not, I was in such shock that I could not stop staring at her.  I’m sure she thought I was a freak but this girl looked EXACTLY like me.

Once or twice a year throughout college I would get phone calls from people wanting to know why I didn’t say hi when they saw me at a place I had never been or where I was going when I passed them on the road while I was magically still in my bed.  I even got an angry phone call from my mother when I was 19 or 20 because some guys that worked for my dad swore to him they saw me at some trashy bar in a town a didn’t live in or even visit that often.  Its hard to convince people its not you when the person looks exactly like you.

Over the last 2 years the encounters people in my life have been having with this girl have gotten more frequent and I’ve been mistaken for her on several occasions as well.  I can only assume I am being mistaken for the girl that is being mistaken for me.   Let me also note that the sighting of this mystery girl always occur in a 10 mile radius an hour from where I grew up.

One and a half years ago I bought a harvest moon color VW Beetle convertible (biggest mistake of my life, judge me later).  That’s when things really started to get weird.  I have been led to believe that my twin also drives this same car. When I drove that thing the amount of pissed off people that I ignored when they “waved at me” tripled.  Aubrey and Erin (cousins to S and me who lived with us at the time) were visiting their mom and passed “me” waving and called me immediately to find out where I was going. The real me was tucked up into bed watching Gossip Girl but that was the point that I knew there really was a girl running around town tricking people.

A few short weeks after that happened I was leaving a place with my mother in the same 10 mile radius and a truck swerved over in front of me in a parking lot and starting laughing and waving as he rolled down his window.  He pulled up next to me to chat and I just stared at him.  It took him a second and his eyes got quite large and he apologized because he thought I was someone else.

I hadn’t heard much about this girl in a while until last night. A distant cousin of my mom’s posted this on my facebook wall:

 

I thought “ah…she’s still alive.”

Then today my best friend in this world besides S of course, who would know me just by seeing my shadow sent me this:

At least my boobs are bigger.

Does this happen to other people???

-G