design sparrow: ALT TAB: 43/52

I'm in Boulder, CO this weekend celebrating my birthday with Jackie. My separated at birth cribmate.

How many friends can you say you've known since the day one? We must have made a pact to find each other later on because we met up again in the second grade.

I remember how we met like it was yesterday.

It was my second year at Carden Memorial so my mom had already gone home and I had already gotten over my first day jitters and was feeling pretty confident that all would be OK. I was sitting on a bench outside waiting for the teacher to come collect us when a nice lady came over and introduced me to her daughter and asked me to show her where our classroom was when we went inside. Jackie didn't seem sure about her mom leaving her there with me so we sat together in silence until it was time to go inside. Sometimes silence is better than talking.

The second time we actually talked to each other was when we were paired up at the same table together a few weeks into the school year. We jumped right to the important stuff. Birthdays. Is this the common kid equivalent to the 'What do you do?' conversations we have now? It seemed like the perfect way to size each other up. That's when we discovered we practically had the same birthday. Add to that coincidence that we were born in the same hospital and we both jumped to the immediate and most reasonable conclussion: I have a twin! Separated at birth!! It made perfect sense.

OK, so maybe it didn't. We looked nothing alike, other than we were tall for our age. {And spent the next 5 years vying for the much coveted back row dead center spot in our class photos.} But we had so much in common we conspired. Like our love for popcorn. And Halloween. And being the tallest girls in the class. And our shared love of all kitties - which she lied about. And our obsession with soccer - which I lied about. But we were cementing the obvious: Twins. We had to be. We gave our version of the truth plenty of breathing room to take on an almost historical account. The fact that I'm adopted gave us even more creative license to let our imaginations go. She even asked her mom if it was possible that she might have given away one of her babies back in the day. You know, out of the generosity of her heart. She said no, unfortunately she hadn't. Which we took as subterfuge and continued believing what we wanted to believe.

And thus began one of the silliest blending of minds known to man. Just thinking back on some of our antics makes me wonder what kind of mischief we'll get into this weekend...