When I tell people that I am a twin; the first words they usually say are “let me see a picture of her!” I then proceed to show them my twin brother and they seem to be slightly disappointed and less interested because people tend to link twins with being strictly identical, although fraternal twins are more common to have, occurring 1 in 17 natural births compared to identical twins occurring 1 in 38 natural births. Another question we get quite a lot is “Are you guys identical?” Unfortunately boy/girl twins cannot be identical because we are different genders, which makes us fraternal. Being a twin is something I wouldn’t trade for the world, we have a connection that only other twins would understand. No, we cannot read each others minds by the way… but that would be so cool!

We do however get to go through life together which is kind of awesome, he’s my built in best friend. Sometimes it’s tough love, but love none-the-less. He’s one of very few people who will tell me what he wants to say regardless of if it might hit a soft spot, and sometimes I might be annoyed at that but I know he has my best interest at heart. He’s constantly pushing me to be better in everything I do. Having siblings is great for some people and I’m thankful to have an older sister as well, but I would be an entirely different person if I didn’t have my twin to take on life with.

When we were young we were inseparable. For the most part we had the same teachers from preschool to eighth grade (which was great for the homework help). We did similar sports, and activities to make it easier for our parents to run us around. For school though, it also meant being known as Tom and Mandy, not one without the other. We both ran cross country which didn't help with being grouped together. I’ll never forget our high school graduation, they announced Tom’s name and he walked across the stage and I was getting ready to walk and I hear “Amanda Marie Thomas Thornton." The announcer was one of our peers, and he realized shortly after and apologized when the ceremony was over, it was funny he combined us like that since it had always been Tom and Mandy. Constantly being together might have been annoying at times, but wherever I went I always knew that I would have somebody there. As we grew older our interests differed and I would go places alone. I found myself missing having someone there I could talk to.

Every year we go to Twins Days which is the largest annual gathering of twins in the world. We have been going since we were babies and we won 'most look alike boy-girl twins' for many years. I always loved going to Twins Days because it was a festival specifically made for twins, multiples and their families. We've made some friends that will last a lifetime which is pretty amazing because we would have never met them if we weren’t twins . Oddly enough for most of the years there have been more sets of fraternal twins in attendance rather than identical twins or multiples.

As we’ve grown older we both set off on different paths, going to different colleges, life experiences, and becoming more independent people. We still talk very frequently especially now since we're both home for the summer. We actually got a tattoo a little less than a week ago which was a spur of the moment idea. He got a roman numeral one and I got a roman numeral two, because he was born first and I was born second. The amount of times I’ve had to explain it to people is unreal because they aren’t twins. Some people have even asked me why I put something so permanent on my body and what if I regret it in the future. The way I look at it, I’m always going to be a twin, he will always be my twin, it’s a bond that will never be broken.