Bait And Switch
My wife gave birth to identical twins one and a half years ago, and they were born with not even a three minute difference from each other. Even this young, they are the definition of identical twins because they look exactly the same, same height, same features, same everything because they shared the same placenta. It should be noted that me and my wife had decided the names already when we were told we would have twins.
For the sake of this post, the firstborn baby would be named “Clone 1” and the second “Clone 2.” However, there’s something that my wife doesn’t know to this day and probably never will. When my wife was still hospitalized for the routine 24-48 “rest” after the uncomplicated delivery, I had a few moments to sit and watch my babies as my wife was resting or sleeping.
When the babies were delivered, one of the nurses put a small pink bracelet on their wrists with their initials written on it to differentiate them and also for obvious reasons. Not gonna lie, during the final hours after my wife had checked out with the doctor for a possible discharge and she was cleared, I had a few Lion King moments with my babies with the proud feeling of “I made this” after they brought them to our room.
Here’s the catch. For a moment, I thought it would be funny to switch the birth bracelets and when we got home, I thought it would be priceless to watch my wife’s reaction when she would find out that she had mixed the babies all along. And so I did it. When she was resting, knowing that my parents and my in-laws were coming for a visit, I switched the bracelets, knowing well that they wouldn’t allow me to do it.
Long story short, when we were all sitting in the room and admiring the babies, I had to leave the room to answer a congratulatory call from one of my best friends because I didn’t want to disrupt my wife’s sleep, only to find out when I walked back in, the bracelets had fallen off from their wrists on the bed and my parents and in-laws were basically playing hot potato with the babies, passing them from one to another, having no clue which baby is Clone 1 and Clone 2.
Now, I know that these bracelets are meant to be cut and not to just pop open, kind of like the festival bracelets, but it opened relatively easily and I suppose when I did it, I broke its “lock mechanism” so they fell off with the slightest movement. In the end, I picked up the bracelets without anyone noticing it, put them around their wrists again (for some reason they stayed intact this time), packed our things, and left.
Even to this day, their identifications might be switched and we call Clone 1 Clone 2 and Clone 2 Clone 1. Or maybe not and everything is how it’s supposed to and was meant to be, I just don’t know and there’s no way to find out. That 50-50 chance and not knowing is kind of irritating and funny at the same time. So yeah, even a year and half later…..that’s how I played myself.