Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!

Harold is here. Harold says that maybe if I write about someone other than Mr. Husband that more people will read my blog. I say, he always was a slow reader. Mr. Husband is definitely the most exciting, thrilling, top-of-the-world, stupendous topic ever. We’ll see what Mr. Husband says about that poignant criticism. We’ll just see.

Or … I could take Mr. Twin Brother’s advice and write a blog all about Harold. Harold. My twin. The kid who no one knew could speak until he was around five years old. The kid who stuck a giant King’s Island pencil in my leg when we were six years old. The kid who refused to sit on the hump in mom’s bike kiddie seat (she had two kids in one seat—Bravo, mom!) that resulted in my losing an ankle to the vicious bike monster spokes. The kid who proposed the theory of rope-around-waist-and-tied-to-bike will result in faster running, which backfired and resulted in all the ends of my bare-feet-toes becoming bloody stumps for one summer. (His theory, obviously, was complete bunk.) The kid who always had a new idea. And I was the kid that always said, “That’s genius, Harold.”

I always thought he was a genius.

When we were little, Harold used to tell me what to do. Before we were one-year-olds—when we were babies. We had a secret language like most twins. I’m absolutely certain that our secret language was superior to all other possible secret languages. We were always superheroes. We were the Wonder Twins. I was a bird and he was a pail of water. Mom always made our costumes at Halloween. She even made the polyester tights for our Batman and Batgirl costumes. We were certain we could fly. We had a backyard spaceship tree. We had a neighborhood filled with kids like Johnny Odom, Mike Milner, Chris Vogel, and Andy Justin. We were renegades. We were always filled with laughter. And we were often discovering what things in nature could be set on fire. We lived in Ten Mile Creek in Sylvania. Bring on the flood.

Harold likes to take things apart. I was always afraid that Harold would steal my radio, my clock, my tape player, or my electronic microphone that attached to the special tape player. Why was I afraid? Because Harold took apart everything. Nothing could stop him. He had to dissect all electronics. The VCR. The little black and white TV. His own lizard. What makes it tick? What makes Harold tick?

Many do not know. I know. Kindness. He is all goodness. He is selfish, too, but when he’s not being selfish he is being ten times more kind and generous than when he is selfish. He comes to stay with me and we talk for hours. We never stop talking. We laugh. We do not live so much in the “remember when’s” as much as we understand exactly how the other one feels about things that are going on in each of our lives. That twin connection. He is easy going. I am uptight. He is free and relaxed. I am a wound-up bag of neurotic nerves. He is my other half and was always beside me growing up.

Today, he is here. He is downstairs watching TV (and hopefully not taking it apart) as I write and attempt to ready myself for lunch. We’ll go shopping. We’ll have constant banter over clothes that he needs to buy. I’ll make sure he looks good. He’ll make sure that I smile and forget my ever-present worries for a while. He’ll fill just a tiny portion of that big lonely void that Mr. Husband has left behind with his being in L.A. We’ll roll around Birmingham with happy little faces and not a care in the world. I wish everyone could have a twin.