“Take a good look around boys, because your future is about to change.”

Friends:

If you believe that our future is preordained, think again for each step we take has the possibility of dramatically changing our lives.  It just occurred to me a few weeks ago that something that happened to me 17 years ago altered the path of my life so significantly that if things had gone differently, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today or even writing these words.  It boggles the mind…

My favorite comic strip growing up was “Bloom County” followed by its spin-off “Outland” starring the loveable penguin (puffin) Opus, Bill the Cat, Steve Dallas, Milo and a host of others.  One strip that I still remember fairly well involved the character of Milo, a 10-year old boy wise beyond his years.  The end frame of the strip, if I recall correctly, is Milo, paralyzed in stupefaction, as he has just considered the myriad of twists in turns of the roads of his predecessors that led to his being born and the fact that any one different step by someone generations before him could have so significantly shifted the winds of fate that he might never have even been born.  When you think about it like that, it can be staggering.  Each step we take impacts the rest of our life and the lives of those around us.

One of the most popular books of 2013 was “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson and it was a fictional view of the steps that one character took and the numerous different ways that her life changed as a result.  The story was a series of births and deaths for the main character and after each birth, she went through life taking different courses and her life spun off into drastically different ends as a result.  In some instances it was the difference between being 5 minutes early for the train or 5 minutes late; in others it was the difference between being swept up by a wave and avoiding it completely.

Despite the fact that I felt the book missed out on some golden opportunities to truly explore how isolated incidents can impact the course of one’s life, it did provoke me to think about my life and whether I, too, experienced any cross-roads which would have dramatically altered the course of my life had I taken a different path.  And the answer was, to my complete surprise, a resounding yes.  Who knew that something that happened to me at 21 would have such a dramatic impact on my life? 

But the fact of the matter is that had events progressed differently than they did, it is nearly a certainty that I never would have dated Amy, never would have married her and, even more upsettingly, my two beautiful girls would never have been born.  It is inconceivable to me, now, that this world could have existed without my two little ones in it; how the world would have suffered a great injustice by their never being born!  And they are thoughts like that that make me pause and consider the weight of the events that brought me to today. 

If you have seen the Disney movie “Meet The Robinsons” there is a scene at the end of the film in which the future of the characters changes so much that the background scenery changes gradually from a light to dark, from a paradise to a perdition.  As I thought about that one isolated event of mine of 1997 and how incredibly different my life would be now if that event had never taken place, it felt like that; like I was looking at the walls of my house as they faded away, like I was looking at my wife as she faded away and her history was rewritten; and like I was looking at my daughters as they disappeared completely. 

It can be a bit debilitating – trying to imagine this world without Brooklyn and Kensi, or my life without them, or my life without Amy?!? 

Being a glutton for punishment, I did try to imagine it.  I tried to imagine how my life would be different now if things had gone differently in ’94.  I am not going to say that the 17 years since then haven’t been difficult, they certainly have, but they would have been more difficult had things gone differently.  My relationship with my parents, the vacations, the holidays, my semester in London, my friends.  So much of my life would be different now…

At the time, I was devastated by what happened.  I was heartbroken, I was depressed and I thought that things would never get better.  But things had a way of working out for the best, something that you never could have convinced me of at the time.

You hear it said all the time that things happen for a reason and most of the time I think of it as just a throwaway remark to make someone feel better when a bad thing happens.  But man is it true!  I truly think that there is a higher power up there who put all of the pieces in place and led me to where I am today and who I am with.  How can I not believe that when I look into Brooklyn’s and Kensi’s eyes and see the special people they are?  It was destined for them to be born, it was destined for them to be mine.  And man, is it scary to think how everything in my life would have been different if not for that one solitary occurrence in 1997.

 

 

“Oh, obviously! The moment I sat down I thought I was looking into a mirror.”

Friends:

People always ask me what it’s like to be an identical twin.  Frankly, I have never given it much thought, simply because it is the only thing I have ever known.  For the 9 whole minutes of my life in which I was not a twin, all of the focus and attention was on my still-to-be-born brother and not me.  But lately it has become more obvious to me what the experience of being a twin is like.

Imagine walking into a room of 100 strangers and having all 200 eyes (assuming there aren’t any pirates in the room) turn and look at you.  That’s what it is like to be a twin.  The idea of blending into the background or standing in the shadows is a concept that is based more in fantasy than reality.  As a twin, you can’t just blend into the crowd.  You are the focus of attention.  And you better darn well get used to it.

Wherever my brother and I would go, we would be the center of attention.  It didn’t hurt that we were just the cutest kids (J); the fact that there were two of us exactly alike was intoxicating to people.  We were freaks of nature; to some people it was as if we were mythical figures that had never before been viewed. 

And the questions we would get asked were sometimes so asinine I don’t know how my brother and I kept straight faces; or how we refrained from making stupid comments in response.  “Who’s smarter?”  “Who’s better at baseball?”  “If I hit him, will you feel it?”  That one was always my favorite because I would tell them to try it and see what happened.  My brother wasn’t such a fan of that, though.

Being a twin meant I was always on some sort of stage.  I didn’t need to act out to get attention.  I didn’t need to sing and dance and make a spectacle to get people to notice me.  People noticed me just because of who I looked like.  When I meet other people who have twin siblings, my first questions is to ask if they are identical.  The majority of the time the answer is “no.”  At that point, I usually don’t have much else to say—because unless you are an identical twin, you don’t know what this is like.  Even fraternal twins are outside this club.

None of this truly occurred to me until recently.  Last week my dad and brother and I went to Dodgers fantasy baseball camp.  What better way to try to blend in, right?  Everyone wearing the same uniform, only the names and numbers are different.  Should be a piece of cake.  Not a chance—from the minute Phil and I walked in the room, everyone knew us.  In fact, our names were somewhat legendary already; we had new campers who said that they were already aware of us from a camp we had done 2 ½ years ago!  Of course, it didn’t hurt that we are still pretty good ballplayers; but still, the fact that we were twins was the draw.  But Phil and I, after 38 years, are so used to it, that it doesn’t faze us when people pay us attention. 

That experience gave me pause to look back on the past 20 years since high school ended.  All of the schooling up through high school was nothing more than popularity for being strange.  But college and law school and beyond, I realize that I was never terribly uncomfortable in large crowds of people or making friends or standing out in a crowd.  All of those years of people turning around and staring made it that much easier for me to go off and do it on my own.  Sure, there were times when blending into the background was a wonderful respite, but in truth, I wasn’t made for the shadows.  The fact that I am a twin and have always been the center of attention has made me better at so many things, such as making friends and even networking.  I am less intimidated walking into a room of strangers than most people because I have so much experience doing it and knowing the feeling of everyone turning and looking.  Performing in front of an audience, giving a speech or speaking in front of crowds was never as difficult for me as I know it can be for some. The idea of stage fright being debilitating is foreign to me, because the way I see it, Phil and I were always on stage.  If a kid acts up, he can be taken out of the room.  If a twin acts up, it is much more noticeable.  And I think that Phil and I thrived on that attention. 

So when I stand in front of a room and lead a networking group or walk into a new situation and find a way to get noticed, I truly think it is a function of my being an identical twin.  When so many people are looking at you all the time, you kind of get used to it.  At first, it seems like they expect you to do some sort of a trick; eventually you embrace the attention and get used to it.

What’s it like being an identical twin?  It’s like always being on stage with the spotlight on you.

What’s it like being an identical twin?  Beats the heck out of me!  It’s the only thing I’ve ever known!