Being Labeled Isn't Always Negative

This post is written as an entry to the Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop

with my thanks for the outlet in which to express myself...

 
In what way were you labeled as a child and how did it affect you?

Let’s start from the beginning.    Despite whether one believes in life at conception, at birth, or anywhere in between, my beginning point is actually at conception.  You see, I was born an identical twin.  We shared everything, the same uterus, the same umbilical cord, the same amniotic fluid.  We also shared the same first initial.  Like life wasn’t going to be confusing enough, my parents chose alliteration.  I guess the literary part of my mother was always present. 

When one thinks of being labeled as a child, negative connotations probably come to mind such as “dork”, “nerd”, “challenged”, “teacher’s pet”; there’s a whole assortment out there.  In my case, the labels “the twins”, “the quiet ones” (except when screaming when we were babies; we were actually nicknamed Screaming Mimi), “yous” (short for you guys; we were born in the 70’s after all), and lastly “Dawna” (a combination of Dawn, my sister, and Donna, myself) really didn’t matter, we responded to just about every name.

For me, being aligned with someone who is highly intelligent, playful, inquisitive, resourceful, and adorable was almost always a positive.  Of course, there were a few random occasions that I wished I was separate.   In these rare cases, I take solace in the fact that we are also mirror images.

We were two separate people but one unit.  I never realized the former until about 18 years later when we went to different colleges.  Even then, I still referred to the pronoun “we” when asked to describe myself.  People probably thought I had Multiple Personality Disorder, I don’t.  It was also in college that I broke the perception of being quiet.  I answered every question in class, volunteered for approximately 10 hours a week, and worked at the Academic Computing Center for 20 hours a week, while taking an 18 credit class load and 8:00am classes.  What was I thinking?  In hindsight, I think I was keeping so busy as to fill the void left when my twin and I went our own ways for the first time.

Today, I am proud to be labeled almost anything because as the saying goes “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”.  I am old enough now to realize that if I choose not to let labels stick, they just become something tacky that someone said.

Being labeled a twin has been the most rewarding experience.  I wouldn’t change it for the world and I’d even wear it proudly on my forehead.