design: Ava Robinson
permission to print photos: Shannan Johnson
When I first crawled out of the womb, I was expecting a nice, warm welcome with plenty of “ooo’s” and “awwwe’s,” because frankly, I was utterly adorable. But, unfortunately, my special moment was short lived as my special birthday was completely ruined by the one and only Emilee Johnson. I had only lived for one glorious, beautiful minute when my twin sister stepped out and stole my spotlight.
So, to get back at her for committing such a huge crime I spent the next 13 years of my life attempting to out shine her. But, to be honest, that never worked. In fact. all it caused was lots of amusing fights.
Our fights weren’t amusing at the time, but now is a different story. Looking back, I realize how ridiculous we must have looked when we were fighting. Just to clarify I’m talking about the physical types of fights not the psychological torture ones. I mean like most sisters do, we had psychological fights too.
The physical fights were hilarious because my sister and I are identical twins; this is important to note as this meant that at the time we had the same DNA and physical makeup. So, when we fought, we practically had the same strength meaning that fighting was purely about strategy. And by strategy I mean the run to a sofa and kick up.
For anyone who doesn’t have siblings, the run to sofa and kick up is a classic sibling fighting technique. The technique goes a little like this: siblings wrestling on the ground and if it’s a fairly even match one sibling will finally break free and run to a sofa (or a bed) to lay on their back and kick upwards. The other sibling will be upset from the wrestling that naively they will try to attack even if they are at a major disadvantage. The run and kick technique is basically impenetrable, unless one is bad at kicking, and if so they are doomed, but most of the time the sibling that ain’t running and kicking ain’t going to be winning. One doesn’t have to be particularly good at kicking or aiming, if one just aimlessly, yet furiously swings legs in all directions, a foot is sure to smack a face at one point or another.
The run and kick technique was often deployed by me and my sister in almost every fight. However, this technique was not the funny part. The truly humiliating part was the fact that we would “wrestle”, but it looked like there were two clones pushing eachother with arms shaking the same amount. To an onlooker, it looked like we were freezing in the rain and giving each other a hug, when we were actually trying to assert our dominance. It also kinda looked like my sister and I were pretending to be a tire and were just rolling in circles. The run and kick method was practically the only way a fight could stop as it was the only effective technique we had.
We fought alot as children, I don’t blame her for wanting to fight me, I was a complete brat, an adorable brat, but a brat. However, when we did come together, it was at the expense of others.
“Others” meaning our brother. My sister and I could never truly win or lose a fight when we were fighting each other, however there was a chance of winning when teamed up against our older brother. On our own, there was no chance that either one of us could beat our brother, he easily won each fight. However when my sister and I teamed up there was a chance that we could win, which rarely happened but like hey, fighting was just not our strong suit. Our brother wouldn’t even need to use the run and kick technique he could just hold each of us down with one arm each. On the bright side, my sister and I bonded over a shared enemy.
My brother was actually pretty responsible and would break up our fights, at the same time he was also the reason why my sister and I would work together. He also saved us from just rolling around endlessly. Looking back those fights were all dumb, but hey, at least I learned something: my twin and I are really bad at wrestling.
