Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The Sisters Machiato



I’ve heard tell of twins separated at birth who were so connected emotionally that if something bad happened to one twin, the other would feel the pain although they had never met. Every time I hear a phenomenal report like that I think about my sister and me... because we’re pretty much the polar opposite of that.

Does Big Big feel an intuitive pang of despair when I’m hurt even if I’m a thousand miles away? Definitely not. Although she does start shaking uncontrollably for no apparent reason on occasion, and then later in the day discover that Fendi has released a new limited edition clutch.

To be fair, I don’t instinctively suffer through her setbacks either. In fact, I’ve witnessed her getting hit right in the face with a wiffle ball bat, and I think my general reaction was pretty much hysterical laughter.

Essentially, Big Big is my doppelganger. We look eerily similar, same hair same facial features, same body type, same family… but almost everything else about us is a world apart.

We were raised by the same crazy people, and yet I am clearly the product of excessive leniency while Big Big miraculously managed to end up a perfect cookie cutter Scarsdale Jew. I have no idea how this happened.

I know it didn’t happen at birth. For the first ten or so years of her life, Biggy was just as crazy as I was. While all the normal siblings were playing around with their Tiffany rattles and Babies First Benzs, Biggy and I would routinely attempt to kill each other. Sometimes I’d knock her over and kick her in the head, other times I’d be in more of a holding a pillow over her face kind of mood. She would occasionally try to bite my face off while I slept, but in general she tended to stick to throwing things at me while my back was turned.

Our other favorite activity was cursing at each other. I’m not talking about usual toddler cursing either. My father had been generous enough to supply us with an impressive supply of expletives at a very early age, so it wasn’t like she’d call me a poopy head and I’d call her stupid face and then we’d cry, it was more like she’d call me a fat asshole son of a bitch and I’d call her a cocksucking mutherfucker and then we’d brawl. The only words you weren’t allowed to say in our house were “instant” and “retail”. Everything else was fair game.

Then, somewhere around age 10 or 11 (I was 13 or 14) everything changed. While I was reaching new levels of bat-shit-crazy on a daily basis, Big suddenly did a 180 and turned into a perfect Stepford kid. She was a skinny, pretty, social and athletic pre-teen and I was “that weird girl who wears a lot of body glitter”.

At first I assumed she had been replaced by a pod person and I was extremely jealous. Sadly, this was not the case. Eventually, we started telling people we were distant cousins.

Now Big is a the social chair of Sigma Delta I Come From Money, one year away form graduating from JAP-U with a bachelors in Pre-Wed, and I am about embark on a career where young, malleable minds will be given to me to mold into my own image… wah ha ha! I guess it worked out pretty well for both of us.

We can still bond over grande skim sugar free vanilla lattes and reminisce about the good old days
Sometimes we still fight… I’ll get upset when she holds a shanghi dumpling up to her ear to find out if she can hear the ocean, or she’ll get frustrated when I confuse the logo for Chanel and Coach, but for the most part we’ve come to accept our differences.

Ultimately, it was all a matter of realizing that we were just blossoming from similar cocoons into the drastically different women were destined to become. Big emerged a beautiful, shop-happy, vapid JAP, and I had emerged a beautiful, shop-happy, intellectual sociopath.

Just as god intended.