Karma

People say a lot of things when you have identical twins, but one thing I get asked a lot is if I ever mix the boys up. The short answer is no, but really that’s not entirely true. I’ve never looked at them and mistaken one for another (to me, they look very different) but I’ve made assumptions on who’s doing what from another room and guessed wrong. They always correct me. Quickly.

(It’s probably worth noting that Bean didn’t figure out who was who until maybe a year ago. The boys were SIX YEARS OLD at that point. When they were babies, she’d use their shirt color – “Mom, the blue one is crying” – and eventually she just started calling them both Buddy. Not quite sure how this kid qualified for TAG, but evidently the criteria is fairly loose.)

This morning, a boy came into our room at 4:43am to ask if he could go downstairs. I assumed it was Roo the perpetual early riser and didn’t even really open my eyes. “Just be quiet down there, please” I mumble and roll over in bed. The rest of the house is silent and said boy goes down to watch videos of other people playing Minecraft, which is apparently far more exciting than playing Minecraft himself, but whatever. It’s quiet. That’s all I care about.

The quiet lasts maybe 35 minutes. Then the boy is talking to his videos. Then talking becomes yelling. Melissa calls him by name to bring him upstairs.

“Roo”, quietly. No response. Then “Roo” with a bit more urgency. Silence. Melissa sighs and gets out of bed, because screaming at someone to be quiet is surprisingly ineffective. She goes to the top of the stairs and softly says again, “Roo?” and gets nothing. Down two stairs and a bit louder, “Roo!” and we both hear a response float up: “I’m not Roo.” I burst out laughing as Melissa says, “You couldn’t have told me that six Roo’s ago!?!”

Noodle comes upstairs and all three of us are still cracking up, which only begins all over when the real Roo stomps out of his room with a surly, “YOU GUYS WOKE ME UP!” Apparently laughing at this was the wrong response because he told us we were all “the rudest persons ever” and huffed downstairs to watch videos of cartoons in Russian with no subtitles. Kids are freakin’ weird.

I don’t believe in karma but can say unequivocally that Roo had it coming. The child has woken me up early every morning since before his birth and a little taste of his own medicine is totally worth becoming the rudest persons ever. Also, he doesn’t speak Russian.