Double the birthday gifts, double the college tuition, and double the trouble might not have been ideal for my parents. As for me, however, it is definitely quite an experience being a twin. 

Having a twin is a lot like having a sibling but in the same grade. A distinction between the two, though, is that having a twin creates a more personal and intimate connection than one has with a sibling. 

Though my twin and I have our disagreements, we can collectively concur on the advantages and disadvantages of being a twin.

“The best moment of having a twin is that when you need anything, you have a twin to help you”, Tom said. “The worst moments are sharing everything.” 

As children, my brother and I came as a pair. If you expected one, you also got the other. We aren’t all that unique, apparently: Tom and I are the most common type of twins, according to twinsandmore.co, “Fraternal twins are the most common type of twin, with around 40% of all twins born being boy-girl combination fraternal twins.” 

There’s another level as well. My family comes from the Nigerian Yoruba tribe, which bears one of the largest percentages of twins in the world. According to Reuters.com, “Twins are common in the Yoruba ethnic group that dominates this part of Nigeria. A 1970s study by a British gynecologist found that around 50 sets of twins were born out of every 1,000 births in the southwest – one of the highest rates of twin births in the world.” 

My brother and I have “middle” names indicating the first- and second-born twins. I am Taiwo, meaning the older twin and my brother is Kehinde, meaning the second-born twin. 

According to Reproductivefacts.org, “Naturally, twins occur in about one in 250 pregnancies.” Needless to say, my parents were surprised to find out they were having twins. 

“You don’t expect twins, so whenever I saw the scan, I felt very blessed,” my mother said. 

They were especially excited to have girl and boy twins rather than identical twins, who are either both girls or both boys.

“Whenever people wanted to organize a baby shower for us in our community, they

asked what gender the baby was, and we responded with ‘both,’ ” my father said. 

Ironically, bearing twins in some parts of Nigeria was condemned and was a punishable offense. As reported in artifactsjournal.missouri.edu, “Igbo society viewed twins as a bad omen sent by the “gods.” They considered twins as supernatural beings that could bring devastation upon society”.

According to cnn.com, “twin babies in certain cultures are killed with poisonous plants or abandoned in a room until they starve to death. When mothers die in childbirth, twins have been strapped to her body and buried.”

So I guess it could be said that my twin and I dodged a bullet, quite literally. 

My twin and I were not compared to the mainstream twins in the media, like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Instead, we drew comparisons to the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry because of how much we bicker and banter with one another. 

“We always said that you guys played soccer inside your mom’s womb,” my dad said. 

Earlier in our childhood, my brother and I were put in the same classes. However, as we grew older, we were put in separate classes, thus developing our own interests. 

As clichéd as it may sound, having a twin is essentially like being born with a built-in best friend.