Growing up a Triplet You Always Hear a Set of Questions Throughout Your Life Span

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Tripping

By: Stefan Tonkins

English 102-04

K.Boose

               Growing up a triplet you always hear a set of questions throughout your life span:

Do you all look alike, act alike, like the same things, are you always together, do you like being a triplet?  For me these questions were a part of my everyday life whether you liked it or not. For me life early on was an endless cycle of people trying to pick your brain and find out everything about being one of the three.

              Growing up a triplet you were always one of the three, friends and strangers always asked about your other two while not mentioning you, how are they, are yawl a like etc. The same tedious questions I have heard for nineteen years of my life. Growing nineteen years is a long and overly annoying process to hear how does it feel to be a triplet, how is it being one out of the three, do you feel special, is it like talking to yourself all the time? What a way to live, am I right? Always wondering if I’m unique or if you’re the spitting image of your brothers.

          To me being a triplet is like always having best friends around, you’ll never be bored, never walk alone, never a peaceful moment. Growing up mom would always dress us up from head to the glorious toe in the same outfits. I couldn’t object to it; I was a child who had no say. Throughout elementary school we would dress as one, no one different than the other. Stich by stich, thread by thread we wore the matching outfits. At that age I didn’t have a problem with dressing alike. Even though it meant the students and faculty would have a hard time telling us apart. It would get so bad to a point that we would have to wear nametags so that they could tell us apart. Again a moment in my life that was tedious. I felt ostracized by having to wear a tag so that they could know me rather than getting to know me and remembering who I am. I refused to continue to wear it I felt ridiculous wearing a nametag day after day.

           It was no longer a problem once we were moved up to the fifth grade; that year my mom decided it was time for us to wear our own clothes. I could finally decide to dress how I pleased. To pick out my own attire before I went to bed, it was for the first time a true feeling of independence. It was the sign of change that I yearned for since I was in third grade. But with this new beginning came the same old questions that I believed I left behind me; I was in for a rude awakening.

           Going into middle school it was a whole new playing field, new faces and friends to be made on my own yet I knew that this bliss would die a painful death. Those damning words have once again shown themselves like a thief in the night. I knew to myself that it was pointless to try and escape my own reality. With my classroom only being down the hall from my brother’s homeroom the looks of astonishment and wonder began yet again. This I knew would go on for the next weeks to come before everyone eventually got used to it and lost interest in myself and my triplet brother. Yet I still had no control over it.

          Being a triplet is like being one of three, one part of a greater whole. I was born the middle child so I wasn’t older nor younger than my brothers. For me I always got questioned which one of the three I was, baby one, two, or three. Which I always stated baby two of course. Yet still once again a question that was repetitive and annoying to be asked day in and out, month after month, year after year.

           As I grew older I began to be singled out as the triplet that was different from the other two. When we were going into the seventh grade my brothers began to be more interested in sports. Myself on the other hand was more interested in staying inside watching anime and relaxing. My brothers were big fans of football and wanted to play it, so they signed up for it recreationally with a local team. They played for the Hampton Cavilers football team, also they tried out and made the Cavilers basketball team. It was there they would have a bond of their own. As for me I was the type to stay inside playing video games and watching my favorite anime. That to me was who I was and it felt great to me. I never grew fond to organized sports at all, even watching them on TV I wouldn’t care for a second glance. Sports period were of no importance to me. I stayed that way all the way up until freshman year of high school when I’d finally found a sport I could fall in love with.