I don’t think I am very similar to SisterKaty.  We are really different people–we act different and sleep different and have vastly different goals and priorities.  I sure don’t think that we look alike.  She’s blonde-haired (naturally, though the color of her hair changes with each lunar cycle), green-eyed.  Her body is shaped dramatically different than mine.  Our mouths, chins, noses, and face shapes are all different.

Despite my feelings on the subject, almost everyone that we meet is shocked at our similarities.  We do sound the same vocally.  We tend to use a lot of the same words (though I use “like” about 30,000 times an hour less than she does) (and I tend to exaggerate more than she does, also), and have similar vocal inflections.  On the phone, only the most scrutinizing ears can tell the difference between us.  Similar vocal patterning, however, does not a set of twins make.

Since she moved to Fort Worth to live with us, we’ve been in the situation where someone knows only one of us far more often.  She works about 15 minutes away from where we live, and she has a whole gaggle of friends of which she is the Queen Bee.  She spends most of her time o’er yonder.  She comes home about once a week, usually on her day off, to decompress and do some laundry.  So because of her lifestyle, she has all these friends that I’ve never met.  Every once in a while Zack and I will make the pilgrimage to the restaurant where she works and all those friends will meet me at the door.  “You’re Sarah!, Katy’s sister!” they’ll say excitedly.  It baffles me every time.  How do they know it’s me?  Am I wearing one of Katy’s shirts?  Is Zack holding up a sign?  I have no idea what similarities they see between us that allow them the boldness, not to ask, but to proclaim my name & relation aloud while standing at the hostess station?

Last night, Katy came home for the first time in 12 days.  She had been gone for longer than her usual period of time away–becoming something akin to a big-wave couch-surfer, taking couch surfing to the next level.  Before I got home from work, she had been wandering around, cleaning up and relaxing when she saw the stellar vest that I got from Target last week.

“Nice vest,” she said, “I got one really similar to it the other day.”  She tried to tell me about how different it was.  “It doesn’t cover as much as yours,” she explained.  “It has 3 buttons, and it Vs in the front, and the back has a pseudo-racer back look to it.”

I said, “Katy.  You just described my vest.”

Swearing that it was different, she ran up the stairs to grab her vest out of the dryer.  I followed her up and we both tried on our respective vests in front of the mirror in her room. They aren’t EXACTLY the same, the material on hers is different, but they could have been made from the same pattern.  We cracked up at our reflections in the mirror, laughing at how goofy we are sometimes.  I suggested that perhaps we should add vests to the list of “areas in which Sarah and Katy are similar beings,” a list that previously included a.) diction and b.) proclivity to come home with matching haircuts.

It wasn’t until she started telling me the story of how she bought the vest that I got a little freaked out.  Not only did Katy and I buy strikingly similar vests (an admittedly weird piece of clothing to just pick up on the fly), we had both purchased them Labor Day at around 3:00, for $19.99.

So I guess I’ll stop trying to tell people that we aren’t the same.  Sure our personalities and lifestyles and friend circles and priorities are completely opposite, but WE BUY SIMILAR VESTS, DAMMIT.  I can deny our similarities no longer.