Color Blindness

Kathy and I get stopped on the street fairly often by people who want to look at our twins. About a quarter of the time, the person will look at the twins, coo or smile at them for awhile, and then ask us "So, are they identical?"

I never really know quite how to react to that question. Usually I just politely say "No, they're fraternal." But the reaction in my head goes something like this:

Let's see. One of them has a gigantic head, almost no hair, and looks Asian. The other one has a little pea-sized head, tons of hair, and looks Caucasian. If they were identical twins, they would look the same. That's why they call it "identical". Dude.

(It's almost always a dude.)

Then I got to wondering if maybe they only look totally different to me because I'm staring at them all the time. Like when they interview parents of identical twins and ask them how they can tell the twins apart, and they always say things like "Oh, I don't have any trouble telling them apart. They look totally different to me!" Or, like, you know how the Olsen twins are not identical twins, but they totally look the same to everyone except their parents and their agent? My daughters aren't the Olsen twins, are they?


Nah. People are just blind.

Speaking of different-race babies, I don't know if you read about that couple that had two sets of twins, and each set had one "black" twin and one "white" twin. The articles make the family sound like some sort of freak of nature, when all that really happened is that this couple had two sets of twins, and two of the kids look more like Dad and two of them look more like the Mom. That wouldn't be that big a deal if the couple weren't interracial.

Personally, I think it's pretty cool that we have one Asian-looking daughter and one Caucasian-looking daughter. But I do sometimes wonder how it's going to affect them as they grow up. I mean, are people going to even believe that they're twins? Are they going to be totally confused when they meet a white girl named "Umezaki"? Are people going to just expect Leah to be good at math and cover her mouth when she laughs? And are they going to expect Riley to, uh, I dunno, become a vegan and shop at Whole Foods?

Meh. Who cares, I guess. At least people will stop asking if they're identical.