Wesley+H's+Op-Ed+Article

Something Must Change!

media type="file" key="wesleyh-muckrakers-2012.mp3"

Look left, right, then left again. Your face then twists into a contorted twinge of bewilderment. You think your looking at an optical illusion, you rub your eyes then look again, for what may seem the thousandth time. You think you need to go to an Ophthalmologist. But no, its just my twin, Ryan, and I. We do look exactly the same, except the misconception is, we are the same person… We are treated as an individual, not as two separate human beings. This image as shadowed me during my entire existence. I am an identical twin, yet I am an distinct individual. I am guilty of playing the role of tricking people of "who's who." There are of course the classic twin pranks such as switching school classes or pretending to be the other twin on the phone. There was the one time that I thought scoring a few extra credit points would give me a cushion for the Biology final. Yet I failed to learn the Biology extra credit song. My twin came to the rescue. He sang the song first, switched T-shirts with me and sang it a second time. No one ever suspected. I do not deny that twins have benefits, but I would like to be known as me, Wesley. Not a day goes by when I do not hear "Twins! Whoever you are! No wait… don't tell me." I have become so used to turning my head when I hear my brother's name, that sometimes even I wonder who I am. Another unjustified scenario in being a twin, is if one makes a mistake, it is reflected on both. So the stakes are higher in a wrongdoing, because one has double the chance to be blamed. There have been numerous times my brother was guilty, yet we both suffered the consequences, and naturally that goes both ways. Being a twin is not the end of the world, it is one of the coolest things our world has to offer. It just could have a few minor details tweaked and it WOULD be the coolest thing in the world. An identical twin is the luck of the draw, you know, one out of every 250 births. Sometimes though, when I am mad at my brother, I do not feel so lucky. I have reflected often who I would be without my brother, and it does leave a pit in my stomach. So those moments when people say, "Are you Wesley? or Ryan?," I guess I can live with it. Just remember, we are two different minds, bodies, and people.