Daily Archives: June 19, 2002

Double Take

“Hey, are you all twins?”

“No. No we’re not.”

I get this a lot when JungFroid and I go out. The thing is, he’s got about twenty thirty pounds on me, our skin tones are different, his facial structure is completely unlike mine, he has the ability to grow facial hair (I don’t), and well–we just look different. At least I think so. Other people don’t understand it either. Brothers, maybe. If you squint real hard. Twins–no.

Why do complete strangers think that we’re twins? I don’t know. It could be any number of things. We both have glasses. (Which are different.) We’ve got similar hair styles. We both work in the “tech” field. We’re roughly the same height, although he’s probably taller than me. Finally, there’s another factor that I don’t like to think counts–but there’s the fact that we’re both Filipino.

There is evidence that make me suspect that the outdated concept of “they all look alike” is the driving factor behind the twins comments. The majority of people that ask this question are caucasian or african-american. For the most part, other Filipinos have never assumed that we are twins, nor have they asked if we are brothers. Probably because they know what other Filipinos look like.

On the other hand, we could just look alike and I don’t see it. At least he’s a pretty good looking guy, so hey–I’m not complaining.