License to Grill

As the parents of twins,  you expect a certain amount of questioning when you leave the house with the kids.  What you never expected  was the degree of the questions or the amount of the comments and the sense of entitlement that the seemingly kind-hearted passerby would feel. A trip to my ever-favorite Target never fails to draw no less than 10 stares followed by "One... two.... oh there's three! They are busy!"  I can't help but think until one of the twins started creeping/crawling this week, it was the two year old that kept us the busiest. Immobile babies are easy babies. 


Okay well, two of them does make for a challenging day. I won't lie that any sort of multiple birth is a highly romanticized notion until the little boogs arrive.  Doctors really need to preface the whole conversation not with "You're having twins!" but rather with "Hey! You're having two babies!"  I think the reality of it all would smack people a lot quicker.  But I digress.  We know we're busy. We know because we live it daily. Many thanks to those folks who feel compelled to point it out 900 times while we try to keep the kids corralled and happy, and try to get our household errands done in a timely fashion. After all, it's enjoyable buying your milk, getting your prescriptions, your formula, your diapers  with stares and whispers barely disguised when it takes one cart to carry the kids and one cart to carry your items. 


Then comes some stranger with questions. "Are those twins?"  Polite smile and nod, keep pushing the cart. It never manages to shake 'em off.  "Are they identical?" No they are not, thanks.  "Are they both boys?" Genius, this one, with all the orange and green floating around my cart. And I sigh. Because I KNOW what is coming next. They never disappoint me. On three. "Are they natural?" Seriously? Now, what I want to know, is are her boobs? But I can't ask, can I? Because that would be impolite. So, why then is my fertility fair game? Sheesh. And she hasn't bought me a drink nor told me her first name. 


It's strange to me how twins or any other sort of multiple birth in our society gives people the liberty to think they are suddenly privy to the most private of information. And to tell the truth, until I had my own twins, it never occurred to me that people would ask such a think or to ask another woman that.  And I still don't, because my husband and I find it so insulting. I've started coming up with clever retorts when people ask me questions about the kids. I save them for the person foolish enough to approach when trying to exit a store quickly with kids in meltdown mode - hey, it happens. "Are those twins?"  "No, one is my husband's and one is my boyfriend's." or my personal favorite: "No, they are 4 months apart." It's fun to watch them wrinkle their face and mentally start doing the math.