Freedom Fighter

Early on in our educational careers, my twin sister and I were asked if we wanted to be separated into different homerooms, or if we wished to continue being packaged together. Without hesitation, after a decade of doing nearly everything in lock step, we eagerly elected to be separated. For the rest of middle school, we never shared a class. In high school, with only a handful of honors and AP classes available, there was no choice but to be thrust back onto similar schedules. By then, we had veered off into our separate interests and aptitudes. I gravitated toward the humanities while she excelled at math and science. Our friend groups were also completely different. She hung out with a pack of girls who were one standard deviation away from the popular crowd while I lunched in the computer lab or on the basketball courts, scarfing bites in-between games. Even as our social and school lives joined, separated, and reconfigured, one thing remained constant: The rules and boundaries established at home.

One challenge of raising twins, especially a male and female pair, is deciding whether or not to treat them differently. From early on, my parents were of the mindset that we would be treated equally in every respect. We unquestioningly attended the same schools, went to the same summer camps, were involved in all the same after-school activities, and were given the same responsibilities and chores. This arrangement served us relatively well until our teen years, when my sister began to chafe for more freedom. Her driving motivation? Boys.

Where once we had banded together to challenge parental authority for common causes (most of our lobbying centered around extended curfews or higher allowances), our united front quickly fell apart when it came to dating. I had no interest in attending school dances or taking a girl out to a movie. As a teenager, I was happily confined to the five mile radius of our house, which contained my best friend, a community pool, and two strip malls. There was nothing else I needed. My sister came to realize that I wouldn't be a motivated ally this time around and embarked on her own crusade. I stood diplomatically neutral and watched as she campaigned for even later curfews, more use of the family car, and late night phone privileges.

At this time, my father ruled the house and any major decision was left to him. My mother supported him publicly but behind the scenes they struggled with a major difference of opinion regarding dating. My mother wanted to set down strict guidelines, leaving no room for negotiation. "In before nine, no calls after ten, no car use on the weekdays." My father, loath to play the role of totalitarian parent, could be reasoned with (or cajoled) into leaving a little slack. As my sister poked and prodded for weaknesses, she started butting heads with the authorities. Each time she came back a few minutes late, there would be an argument and maybe a weekend grounding, but somehow my father would relent and our curfew would be magically pushed back.

Over a period of several months, my sister managed to get curfew extended from nine to eleven thirty. Since we were still being governed under the "treat them the same" policy, I got my curfew pushed back too. Soon, I emerged as the child that gave them no problems, as I reveled in our additional freedoms but wasn't involved in any of the arguing. I should have been more supportive of my sister but instead gleefully waited for her to mess up to see what constraint might be removed next.

Eventually, my father's will hardened. As the tensions between him and my sister rose, he exacerbated them by trying to withdraw previously extended privileges. At this point, my sister did what almost any teen girl would have done when faced with the choice between first love and family restrictions: she rebelled. Instead of gently pushing back against her perceived captors, she reacted to the new regime by basically going crazy.

She started sneaking out at night, lying to them about what she was doing after school, and generally disregarding any and all rules. Each time she was caught, a privilege was stripped from her while mine remained intact. This infuriated her but my father reasoned that it wasn't fair for me to lose my privileges on account of her bad behavior. I benignly stuck around the neighborhood most nights, plopped on the couch watching movies, rarely getting in trouble, and playing witness to an escalating war between my parents and my sister.

Subtly, without acknowledging it, the central tenet in their child rearing philosophy had changed. There now existed two sets of rules, one for me and one for her. As their relationship deteriorated, my parents took extreme measures such as setting the house alarm at nights so she couldn't sneak out. One morning before school, after being shaken awake by my mom, I sleepily followed her the short distance across the hall to my sister's room. The window was wide open, the insect screen flung out on the grass twenty feet below, and my sister missing. Desperate to escape an untenable situation—my parents were set to send her away to Texas for the summer, in an attempt to starve her relationship through distance—my sister had taken the only escape route available. Her room was on the second floor and it never occurred to my parents that they should activate the upstairs alarm too.

That morning, instead of joining in my parents' panic, I laughed incredulously, thinking of my unathletic sister, runner of a nine minute mile, hopping out her window with barely any climbing structures below to the safety of her boyfriend's waiting car. It was a physical and mental feat beyond my imagination and I was both impressed with her audacity and appalled at the risk she’d taken.

My sister's dramatic escape scared my parents to the point they decided to no longer rule with an iron fist. They also gave up all pretense of unilaterally supporting each other's decisions. My mother took a much more active role with my sister while my father, humbled that "his way" had led to a Houdini-like escape, was forced to confront his failure. Softening their stance, frightened of driving their daughter away, my parents started supporting my sister instead of constantly forcing her to choose between family and the boyfriend. While their relationship wasn't instantly repaired, it was on the mend.

Left to my own devices for most of high school, I chose to go off to college in a distant state (my sister stayed in San Diego to be closer to her boyfriend) and within that time somehow flipped good child bad child roles with my sister. No longer causing my parents grief, she had gained something in all her hard fought battles. She was now more mature and independent than me, and had also taken a job early on in her relationship to support new expenses, helping her learn fiscal responsibility. I experienced most of college like a kid left on a playground, neglecting my studies, eradicating any semblance of a healthy lifestyle, and leaving my parents puzzled as to where they had gone wrong raising me. My accumulated reservoir of goodwill faded as I drifted further and further away from accountability. After four years, my sister ended up graduating on the Dean's List while I left school early and wandered from temporary careers to temporary cities.

As the philosophy of treating us both equally had been clearly deviated from years ago, the differences started to manifest themselves more overtly in how much help my parents offered us during and post-college. Instead of being punished for having terrible grades and eventually jumping off the good ship academia, I was given permission to move to New York and even granted financial assistance in pursuit of a film career. My Jersey City apartment overlooked the Hudson River, offered a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline, and was nicer than anything I've lived in since.

My sister, always diligent and hard working through everything, had to support herself immediately upon graduation, taking charge of a new life in San Francisco. It was preposterous to her that I suffered no penalty for dropping out of school. Our life decisions were being measured by different metrics but it seemed that while she had pulled ahead and out achieved me in every arena, she was still the one being punished, this time for following the rules.

Years later, this still remains a sore subject between us. She was right of course, and it was absurdly unfair, but recently I pointed out to her that we could never escape each other. Regardless of how we were being evaluated, or which individual paths we took, it would be impossible to not be in constant comparison. I thanked her for jumping out that window, for shattering the perception that we could be perfect children, and then asked if I could crash on her couch for the summer. She reluctantly said, “Yes.”