The Damien Effect

My sister and her husband, Galinda and Scientist™ Joe, are expecting twins.

This statement is very out of the ordinary for the blog, which is an egotistical extension of my ego (hence…egotistic…you get it.) and subjective reality (which is why I was a relatively horrible uncle and mentioned all of my nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays in one fell swoop), but I must make an exception.

Because that statement is important for the egotistical and subjective explanation that follows.

Also, this post is important for two reasons.

1. Lady Ashley’s already yelled at me because I was a horrible horrible “BFF” and didn’t tell her as soon as I knew. Mea culpa, on that one. You can take this anonymous blogpost, anonymous readers dear, as me personally telling you, each and every one, now, that Fred and George Weasley will soon appear on this green earth. K. No more yelling at me for being a bad gossip (because in actuality I am a fantastic gossip. Tell me your secrets.)

2. There’s something about twins that’s always given me the heebie-jeebies that I need to get off my chest before my nephews are actually people and can take offense at it.

…There are so many things wrong with the rationale behind the previous sentence that I’m not even going to touch it, but just move on.

This is the thing. It’s nothing like old superstitions about twins – I believe they’re both going to have a full soul, I don’t think there’s anything creepy about mirror images (they can be a dual aerial act in Varekai!), and I look forward to seeing how they make their older sister run for her money.

But I get creeped out by THE DAMIEN EFFECT™.

For those of you, readers dear, who aren’t familiar with The Omen or its 6/6/06 remake (where the scariest part is Julia’s acting, blah blah blah, I’ve already referenced it multiple times) the premise is this: the anti-Christ is a little British (though technically American – though technically a citizen of Hell, and I’m not sure if they give dual citizenships there) boy who is the son of the American ambassador. Except he’s really the son of a jackal, and the babies were switched in the nursery where he was born. (For a more uplifting version of these events, cf. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, available in your nearest bookstore.)

You see, this isn’t a question of whether Galinda and Joe are going to love one twin more than the other (categorically that answer is: yes – Grant is always going to lose in affection to Tecumseh) – but a question of which twin gets to be Grant and which gets to be Tecumseh. Let’s say that Baby #1 is born. This is Grant. Baby #2 is born. This is Tecumseh. Of the three children, Tecumseh is thus the “babyest,” and pampered, and loved. Ok.

But then the babies are switched in the nursery where they are born (perhaps multiple times?) and Tecumseh is now Grant! And Grant is Tecumseh! And their little eight-month-and-three-week bodies will have already experienced so many DNA transcriptions that there are bound to be some small osobennosti (see the ROD), but they haven’t grown up enough for a) us to tell them apart b) to understand which personality is their own.

For some reason I really need to have a one-name-one-ideal-one-physicality trinity. Maybe I need to think of it like the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics (although Einstein himself didn’t like that. GOD DOES NOT THROW DICE! …But the Devil throws babies into nurseries?)

Besides, maybe some time when they’re three or four months old it’ll turn out that “Grant” is happy-go-lucky and “Tecumseh” is colicky. All Galinda has to do is change the outfits Scientist Joe saw them in earlier that day and POOF! Tecumseh’s become so much better behaved, hasn’t he? There’s a reason he’s our favorite child…

ROD

osobennost’ (pl. osobennosti) - specialties, exceptions. When the trainer administering our entrance physical exam to the gym announced that Briullov, Jude, and I ALL had scoliosis she admitted “Well, it’s really just a minor osobennost’ of your spine, but I’m going to mark it down as scolios anyway.”