I'm Not Gartblue. Just Her Twin.

I thought I should do a community service this morning. There's been too many incidents of mistaken identity this year and the year is only quarter done.

Some of you may know that I have a twin. Not just any twin. An identical twin. One who looks exactly like me (maybe a kg lighter than me and slightly, I mean seriously slightly taller than me), sounds like me and even wears the same style as I do. Tudungs and all. Call her Nobita.

I once looked at a picture of me and I wondered why that dress on me was so unfamiliar. Then it hit me. Heck! That's not me, that's Nobita. Darn! Even I confused us.

Our real names are the same except for a letter, I'm an N, she's a T. And no, I'm not Nobina. Our IC numbers are 2 digits apart. I was always dressed in blues and she'd be in reds when we were huge, fat, cherubic babies. My grandparents even had an artist painted us and the big potraint of us cute, fat, twin babies is hung at my parents' now.

Side Note: Apparently identical twins are far less common than fraternity twins. Hmmm.

We're born 10 minutes apart and I don't care what you think but I am the older of the twin as I came out screaming at 8:29pm on a Saturday night 10 minutes before she did.

Anyway. We always have separate sets of friends after school. I went straight to the UK after my SPM and she spent 3 years here before flying to UK. Then, it's always her friends thinking I was her and my friends thought she was me. They never saw us together, so that's forgiveable.

Now, we both live near each other. And now our kids go to the same schools. Adani & Ariz attend kindy with Imran. Aliya & Ayisha attend SK and AdDaris with Annissa.

So, the circle of people who know us both has considerably grown larger. And so, the incidents of mistaken identity increases. These normally escalate in the first few weeks or months of the beginning of school years and should taper off by the end of the year.

I've had friends and neighbours commenting how foolish they felt when they said hi to "me" only to be gently and embarassingly told that I'm not "me". It's her twin. Everytime me and Nobita meet, we'd be exchanging reports of who's been mistaking us with whom and we'd be describing how that person looked like so that the other can be reminded who she was. Sometimes we call that person up to say that "sorryla, that wasn't me la babe!"

I had 2 incidents in the last week. One was last weekend at my cake deco class. Patutla dia senyum semacam je kat I. I thought she was just friendly until she asked me about one of "our" mutual friends at KPP/ITM and then I realised she thought I was Nobita. I never did attend KPP/ITM.

Then last night at the friendly DincyStore. One of the storekeeper who knows us very well over the years and she knows my kids too, especially Ariz's penchant with ice-creams and she was also the one who called us up when she found Asha was about to throw a big spending party for her friends with RM50 that MrGart mistakenly gave her for pocket money last year.

She was red in the face when she told me that she asked Nobita why weren't Ayisha and Ariz with "me" to which Nobita replied that "these are my children" poniting to her own i.e. Annissa, Imran, Irfan and Arissa. The storekeeper then disbelieving said "Ala kakak ni bergurau pulak". Nobita was gently letting her in that she was really not Gartblue. Adoi!

Anyhow. Not to discourage you. Say hi to me whenever you see me. Do not fret if I may have a look of completely not recognising you. Chances are that's not me. Nobita is as nice as I am. We may bite but we normally smile, warmly, may I add.

Whenever we have to do the yikes-you-got-the-wrong-twin we always always do it gently.

Betul. Serious. I will you down gently. Lepas tu, I gelakkan you la pulak. Hahahaha .. this is amusing. I guess, all those years of sharing rooms and stuff and everything else finally pays off with seeing these looks on your faces. *evil laughs*