Spoiler! :
"The whole object of comedy is to be yourself and the closer you get to that, the funnier you will be." (Jerry Seinfeld)
The stroller of my youth was multitudinous in its functions; it easily transported two babies, catered to our near constant demands of food and entertainment, and also readily acted as a display case for those strangers who felt it their duty to coo over every set of twins that was birthed into this world. They would come in droves, always armed with the same questions. “Are they twins?” they would ask, unable to deduce the obvious fact from our two-seater stroller and weary mother. Next would come the inevitable question of our genders, following which my understanding mother would inform the stranger that I was a girl, and that my brother was a boy. They would look pensive for a moment, but almost always the question that would follow was: “Are they identical?” This question was ridiculous for two reasons; my head was topped with bright orange curls, a trait that was not shared with my brown-haired twin brother, and there are some obvious anatomical differences between baby girls and baby boys. Nevertheless, the question was a common one, perhaps fueled by those who saw us only as twins, rather than the individuals we would grow to be.
When we were young, however, there was no need for us to be individuals. We were more than happy just being collectively us, and we found ourselves to be absolutely hilarious. Under the darkness of night we would rock our cribs across the room, scooting them so that they were next to each other. My brother even had a phase where he thought we were the same person, and so he would simply refer to me with his own name.
Our biggest triumph in failed hilarity would easily be our imaginary friend, Melvo. His origins are cloudy, and to this day it is still a heated debate as to whose brainchild this actually was, but it somehow came to pass that we both had a Melvo. Every waking moment was filled with Melvo’s antics, and every moment was a contest. There were few sentences in those they days that didn’t start with some variation of “Well, MY Melvo does…”, and sentences like that always demanded a retort. Car trips with us were unbearable, as it was during these extended periods of solitude that we allowed Melvo’s joy to spread to family members around us. “My Melvo’s hair is on fire!” “My Melvo just jumped out the window!” we would shout, expecting to be met with tears of laughter, but receiving only half-hearted chuckles. Together we lived in our own little world, and our senses of humor developed solely to amuse one another. He was bored? I would be more than happy to crawl onto the table and drop shiny, breakable objects off of it – a certain pleaser for my crowd of one. Unfortunately, one was all that I ever pleased, and my parents, who never seemed to find me as funny as my brother did, almost always responded negatively.
We did become individuals, despite the whimsy of our private world, and despite the fact that anyone who was too lazy to learn our names simply referred to us as “the twins”. As we were tossed out into the real world and made to make our own friends, we quickly developed into people who were not defined by each other, and dropped the weird twin things. We don’t dress alike, we don’t do all the same activities, we don’t share the same friends, and for the most part, we don’t speak at the same time. Without so much centered around each other, we found it easier to become ourselves and to develop into individuals. We no longer had to rely on our little kid charm to make people laugh, and after awhile we had both developed the ability to make people genuinely laugh. Our humor stems from the fact that we’re truly ourselves, no matter who we’re around. If that means that our friends and other unfortunate people around us need to listen to horrible puns, worse knock knock jokes, and just generally unnecessary, albeit witty, remarks, then so be it. They laugh, and to us, that is a triumph.
The transition from being an adorable baby to being an individual is one that every person does eventually take, whether you came into this world as a pair or not. Perhaps we struggled a bit more with becoming ourselves, since we had spent very little of our young life alone, but I believe that has shaped up into who we are today. We have grown away from the people we were together, and have become unique individuals. When we were little we existed as two parts of the same whole, and lived to make each other laugh. We were funny, but it was in a cute puppy sort of way – we were adorable but rambunctious. If anyone aside from my twin caught onto my jokes, well, that was completely coincidental. Now that I have become myself, I set out to make people laugh and, quite often, I succeed. It was only when I learned to be myself, and stopped depending on others, that I developed a true sense of humor.
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