There was a pair in my high school class. The easiest way to tell them apart was that one of them had a peculiar gait.
I was once married to a twin. Still friends with her identical sister, if her husband was not like a brother to me, she’d be getting my attention.
When they were little girls they pulled the old sitcheroo all the time, run into the bathroom and change shirts, that sort of thing.
When my son was in preschool, there was a set of girl twins in his class; their mother dressed them differently (not matching outfits). To me, they were completely identical and for the three years my son was there, I had absolutely no clue which twin was which. My son and his classmates, however, could tell without a doubt. I would point to one and ask him which twin it was and he would say “Dana” or “Shauna” with a tone that told me I was a complete moron. I asked him how he could tell, and he would just shrug and say, “Because that’s Dana.” So I think that some twins might be able to fool the general public sometimes, but those who REALLY know the twins could not be fooled for more than a few moments.
I do remember watching “My Three Sons” when the oldest son married and had triplets. His wife could not tell the babies apart so she put dots on their feet with a marker to distinguish them, and was beside herself when Uncle Charlie gave the babies a bath and washed the marks off! Even back then, I knew a mom would be able to know her babies.
Moms (and Dads) of multiples today will often paint the babies’ toenails different colors, until they get to know the babies well enough to tell them apart. As newborns, they even fool their mamas sometimes!
A family I knew with identical twins painted the toenails of one baby so they could tell them apart when they were naked; they colour coded their outfits so they could tell them apart when clothed (their sisters referred to them as “the pink baby” and “the yellow baby”). For most of the first year of their lives, and to their great embarrassment, neither parent could tell them apart.
I shared a classroom with identical twins when I was 5. At first, I couldn’t tell them apart but before the year was out my other classmates and I could tell at a glance. Our teacher couldn’t, and would fall for the old switcheroo to our great amusement.
I went to high school with a set of male twins that were very hard to tell apart in ninth grade, but by senior year had aged a little differently that people were able to distinguish them.
There was a set of identical female twins in my high school as well, but they always wore their hair differently, so that was easy.
I went to school with a set of twins (boys) who could play the switcheroo so well that it was policy to keep them in the same classes to avoid cheating.
Ignorance fought! I had no idea. Thanks for setting me straight!
I worked with a pair during highschool. Same haircut, and obviously they were wearing uniform shirts, so clothing didn’t distinguish them either. They could fool new employees and customers, but eventually you learned that Chelsea was the happy one and Nicole was the angry one.
My mom had a one of a pair of boys in her first grade class a few years ago who switched all the time. I believe they eventually grew out of it.
I am an identical twin and we never pulled the old switcheroo because we, ourselves, couldn’t believe we were identical enough. But now we can’t tell ourselves apart in pictures from childhood. Most of the time, since we were about 7 or so, there’s been a major difference in hair or facial expression or weight, but there have been a few times when we’ve hit it just right that we’ll look really identical. But we have no interest in exploiting it with others - just ourselves. For example, we were in a rest room that had a full length mirror opposite my stall and my twin pretended to be my reflection. For a second I thought it was me!
The Dahm triplets have tiny dots tattooed on their bottoms: Jaclyn has none, Nicole has one dot, and Erica has two. This was done when they were babies so that their parents could tell them apart.
One of the pages I supervised at a library had her twin come in to work instead of her. The other pages were in on it, but none of the other employees, including me, had a clue.
That’s funny, DivineComedienne. That was my first thought coming into this thread.
The closest twin story I can think of is a set of twins that shop at my store. 100% identical to the average bystander. Same glasses, same mustache, same balding pattern, same haircut, dress the same. I’ve known them as customers for probably over a decade and it wasn’t until about a year ago when they came in at the same time did I even realize that there was two of them. That kinda took me by surprise.
Now see, if I had an identical twin who really looked identical, I think we’d be going clothes shopping together all the time. Then I can have **her **try on the clothes and I’ll see if this skirt *really *makes my ass look big!
I think the most interesting thing about being a twin would be not having the false image of yourself the rest of us imagine that we look like.
Not only that, GuanoLad, but never saying “Do I really sound like that?” when you hear your voice recorded and played back.
Here’s a switcheroo story. One of my younger brothers happens to look, sound and act a lot like me, even to this day. We sound exactly the same on the phone, and people can only tell the difference because we have different styles of speaking. We’ve frequently been mistaken as twins, even though I was born 2 years before him.
Anyways, back when we were teenagers we decided we were going to pull a phone prank on his boss. He timed his bike ride to work, which worked out to 12 minutes on average. The day of the prank, 10 minutes after he left for work I called Subway posing as him.
Me: “Hey, this is EvilBro, do I work today?”
Boss: irritated “Yea, and you’re supposed to be here in 5 minutes!”
Me: “OK I’ll be there in a minute.”
My brother said he dashed into the backroom literally a minute later, huffing and puffing and said breathlessly “I got here as soon as I could!” and his boss’ eyes bugged out like he’d appeared out of nowhere. It was epic. 
Keep in mind this was before cellphones were affordable, and virtually no one had them. Also it was a small town and there were very few payphones in the area.
In middle school, I was in band and Spanish class with a girl I’d never met before named Linda. The first day of Spanish, we were all required to pick Spanish names, so Linda was called Guadalupe. One day, almost a year later, I saw two Lindas walking home together! It turned out that I had band with Linda, but Spanish with her identical twin Christine, who I had always called by the Spanish name Guadalupe. All this time I had thought they were the same person.
I went to highschool with twins guys. Even after 3 years of classes with both of them I couldn’t tell them apart. Some of the girls they dated said they could but I always wonder.
I just suggested yesterday that my twin nieces should do the switcheroo today, since one of them has to be in two separate events today, with a very tight two-hour drive in between. Since her sister is actually going along to the first event to help, I said she should just pretend to be Twin A (it’s just a volunteering stint at the Marathon, not actually competing this year) so that Twin A can get an earlier start down to college for the important event. I don’t know if they’ve ever tried the switcheroo when they were little…they are as identical as can be, but they are very well-behaved, too! And they have never dressed alike.