Author: Donald Guenther
Uploaded: 10/25/2013
A few years back my wife Kyung got mad at me. That has only happened once. We were in the kitchen and she stomped out. I smiled and said to her daughter Colleen that she thinks she’s big and I should be afraid of her. Colleen, even though she had 5 inches on her mom, said her mom could probably cause some serious damage. In Colleen’s mind her mom is big.
In my life I have some big people too. My older twin sisters will always be big to me. At five feet tall, I’m 6ft 1 inch; they are taller than I am. In my mind the twins, Anjo and Annie, are much bigger than I am.
Before I went to elementary school I can remember playing hopscotch with Anjo and Annie along with my brother Johnny, a year older than myself. With four of us playing, the first three squares filled up fast. We played that you couldn’t step in a box with any markers. I couldn’t make the jump to the double squares to clear the rock marked first three squares. Anjo and Annie could make the jump. Thinking back they had sized the game just so that would happen. The twins are bigger and smarter than Johnny and I. In passing I might clarify for the record that they were actually small and started school a year late.
To top off the bigger than I am mindset mom had another set of twins. Anjo and Annie started being called the big twins. As twins they dressed alike and stayed together. They both became eight grade cheerleaders which made us proud of them.
In high school they started dressing differently. Change is hard and thinking of them as individuals stressed the family. They paired up in tennis doubles and did well. Both went on to the same college. Their last act as twins happened in their third year of college when they purchased an old 1959 ford together for $100. The car ran well even though rusty. Within a year someone T-boned them and totaled their car. They received $100 for the car and kept driving the gem. They would laugh and say they had a free car. I didn’t mind as long as they didn’t park in front of my dorm.
Anjo, being the risk taker and adventurous one, married to a like-minded man. Annie being more the homemaker married a man into ranching. They are different people with different types of lives. No longer are they referred to as twins.
When I think of them, I think of them as bigger than myself and no longer as twins. I hear they have plans to live next to one another and I think that is great. They have accepted each other and are great friends. I now view what they are doing as something big. I guess a twins are short lived but big is forever.