Feelings
Tip Toe pa rin?
By Emmanuelle
We continue last week’s story of twin brothers Tip and Toe:
Up until now, I never could figure out why our parents had this compulsion to parade the very obvious – that Toe and I are twins! If I could still feel this way, I can just imagine the woes of every other offspring of multiple births, much more the triplets, quads, quints and so on!
By subconscious mutual consent, Toe and I avoid being too visible; but the oneness of our twin selves make us too doubly visible. When people realize they are looking at a pair of armed and legged photocopies walking about, the human typical reaction would be: their eyes open wide, they nudge their companions’ attention, then they whisper their wonder loudly – Ay, siping?! Mankaluplupa ira?
Their eyes would shift from one to the other then back – comparing, matching, weighing. Everyday showbiz. Zoobiz!
We were never sure if we should feel flattered or bothered with the attention. And, from the very beginning, our parents didn’t make things easy for us either. First and foremost, they were the pasaway ones.
Mother would always buy two sets of everything for Toe and I. At first, it was cute and fun; later on, it got to be so much strain. She would dress us in identical white shirts, white socks and white shoes with maong pants and matching blue caps. Before we left the house, one of us would find an excuse to slip back to our room, exchange the white shirt for a yellow one. Before we stepped out the gate, we gasped at each other. I, too, had exchanged the white shirt for a yellow one!
Everything was fine between Toe and I from babyhood to fifteen years of age. It was only during the last of our high school years that it was not fine at all.
Toe and I were both proficient in math and the sciences, but in one of our unsaid unwritten tactical alliances, Toe zoomed in for the student body and I joined the school paper. At senior year, he was the president and I was the editor-in-chief. And that was when Toe fell in love with his vice-president, and I likewise fell in love with my associate editor. Who, unfortunately for Toe and I both, was one and the same person.
Ano ka, hilo? I didn’t mean Toe and I were one and the same person. Though we looked like one and the same person, we were not one and the same person. I meant, his vice-president and my associate editor were one and the same person. She was one person holding two different positions. I mean, two organizational positions. His vice-president in the student body, my associate editor in the schoolpaper.
She was that good. She was second to practically one person split into twoins. Twoins, two persons who are twins. Ay, agay lay.
If she was almost as good a leader as the president, and if she was almost as good a writer as the editor-in-chief, she was practically second to no one. I mean, not one. She was more than one; in fact, she was almost two. Ay, agaygay.
And so, Toe and I started to unravel here as best twoins. As I said last week, I sought her out. Toe, too, sought her out. I won her hand. When I did, Toe definitely didn’t. From seventeen years of age to long past twenty-three, she and I had a very long engagement. She asked this of me, and who was I to deny her that? She didn’t ask for a hundred-year engagement, did she?
She just wanted to make sure, to be sure, to be very sure, she loved me not him. Tip, not Toe. We were too much the same side of a coin. Not she and I. I meant, Toe and I.
So now, you ask, why I call you from UK, and Toe calls you from US?
She married him, not me. Toe, not Tip. She said, it would be just like marrying you, Tip. Only that, instead of Tip, its Toe.
I was not mad. I was not bitter. I just said, as in a poem I’ve read, but what if Toe dies and you have to bury him, would you bury Tip instead of Toe? Or would you bury Tip and for good measure Toe too because you were too hilo? You bitch.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/)
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