Twinning!

 

Alfredo and Aylin

I can't tell you for sure how many times my mother said she wished I had been twins, supplying the family with twice the commotion, stale vaudeville jokes, and letters from educators, draft boards, and local courts. I'm fairly certain the total was "zero," as in, one of me was enough.

So how would my family, or any family, respond to having a set of twins - a boy and a girl - born in different years!? But it happened out west, of course.

And as it happens, the kids were born at the Natividad Medical Center in Monterey County, California. Natividad means nativity, the basis for the Christian holiday of Christmas, in Spanish, and it was just after Christmas - New Year's Eve and New Year's Day - when big brother Alfredo Antonio Trujillo made his grand entrance, followed by his sister Aylin Yolanda as midnight 2022 rolled in. 

The hospital reports that the twins' mom was tickled pink and blue over all this. According to the statistics, the odds of twins being born in different years are about one in two million.

By the way, if you have a baby this month, you have a chance to have what is now called a "short interval" baby later in the year. Kids born to the same parents used to be called "Irish twins" or "Dutch twins," but it now seems advisable not to ascribe a nationality to two blessed events occurring in the same calendar year, as long as people of all derivations continue reproducing.

And that's gonna happen, I assure you.

These two kids are going to have a lot of fun with this over the years.