TBT #58: Mia and Mya

Kristine and I were going through the United States Social Security List of Popular Baby Names tonight, for whatever reason. And while there was a lot that bothered me — the fact that Jacob is now a more popular name than Matthew, the seemingly meteoric rise of ‘Ethan’, and how the two most popular girls’ names seem to be largely inspired by characters Ross knew on Friends — but what really got me was the twin section. Okay, I can ignore that damn near 90% of this list is made up of names starting with the same letter. And, hell, I can even get past Hope and Faith at number five, despite that being a fucking TGIF sitcom. But what I can not forgive is #109: Mia and Mya. That, in my estimation, is an act of inhumanity on par with anything that ever happened in Rwanda. And I realize that’s extreme, because it’s unlikely that a set of twins named Mya and Mia ever caused the deaths of a hundred thousand people. But to define inhumanity by the body count is short-sighted. It ignores the real suffering. It ignores the damned horror of it all.

Mia and Mya is where it all went wrong. They are, regrettably, the Best Thing for September 13, 2005.

So here’s what I don’t get

I’ve been thinking about this. And it’s hard, you know, because I’m not a twin. Really, I’m not. Not that anyone ever assumes that about anybody. Nobody ever looks at another person and says “I bet they’re a twin.” That would, in fact, be a terrible thing to think about someone, wouldn’t it? I would probably be insulted. I mean, unless you base that assumption on a large jagged scar running across the person’s back — vestiges of some long-departed conjoined brother — what you’re probably saying, when you guess someone is a twin, is that they’re not unique. “That person,” you’re saying, “likely has someone exactly like them in their life.” I’d be pretty mad if someone thought that about me. It implies something so hurtful; it’s like they might as well just point at you and say “You’re unspectacular.”

And being unspectacular is what I fear most.

High Above Halifax

So I’m back in Halifax now, on the top floor of a big yellow house on Henry Street. The floors are made of hardwood and the ceilings are seemingly nine feet tall; I feel both elegant and short all at once. As apartment goes, it is about a hundred times better than my last place, which turned out to be very much like a cave. And the worst kind of cave, too. The kind with darkness and cold and mould mushrooms and trolls. There wasn’t even a dinosaur or a giant penny.

So this new place is a big step up. You’ll see pictures soon. Or you can just come over and visit us, if you’d like. I think you would be impressed. I hope you are, anyway! We are actually looking for people who can make that little impressed whistle. Do you know the one I mean? Where you sort of whistle and it goes up an octave, as if to indicate “I am impressed!” I want someone to walk into our apartment and do that. So if you can do that, please contact me.

Between Two Dates

Everyone says summer doesn’t end until September 21st. But they are all liars. Summer can’t just be defined by the time between two arbitrary dates. Summer is more than that. Summer is about this time in your life with no — or less — obligations. It’s a season of being different, of taking risks, of flying about in airplanes or sailing down rivers and seeing things you never thought you’d see so young. For as long as I can remember, summer always meant something special. It was never just the time between two dates.

When I was a kid, I spent most of my summers at the cottage, by the lake. In fact, until I started working, I spent every summer at the cottage. And, even though I went through a weird angsty teenage phase where I hated it, looking back it was that time that gave me all these notions of summer, and what it should be. It was all silly things like reading a million paperback novels or playing Scrabble every day, or watching the dog hunt frogs in the shallow water near the dock. Eating everything off the barbecue and floating off a rubber raft, we faced only a slow breeze pushing towards September.

There was something about that kind of lackadaisical life, appealing to me now and at a young age, that enraged me as a teenager. It’s still not entirely clear, but the idea of spending so much time doing nothing drove me crazy. I was 14! I was ready. I had big and crazy ideas about god and girls and life and the world. I wrote long and meandering essays about how I was going to change things. I was going to make - a - difference. And I could not do that by learning how to water ski, or walking the dog through the forest. No, I needed something with more substance. Something that meant something.

Sometimes Why

I think what bothers me most about Mia and Mya comes from the idea that twins are, by their very nature, not unique. Or, at least, they are LESS unique than us non-twin people. And I don’t mean to offend anybody, but there’s really no getting around that. Even if they are completely unique in their personalities, they still LOOK like another person. So they lose out on a little bit of the uniqueness — the specialness — that I, at least, really enjoy.

And it’s all compounded by these braindead parents who can’t help but give them cutesy names that rhyme or sound the same, and then go further and dress them alike and take them everywhere together and teach them to say things in unison and, god, it all gets so fucking disgusting. Until we get to Mia and Mya. Faced with all of that — I assume any parent going for the Mia and Mya naming scheme would be hardcore about dressing their twins alike — they do not even get distinctive names. Where’s Mia supposed to go to find herself? How special can you feel, when all you have separating you from another person is an i? A single vowel.

Can you imagine, only having that to cling to? To have to stand up and say “I am a unique person in this world! I have an i! I am special! I am different! I am unique!”

People would probably laugh. And get suspicious. Because an i doesn’t sound so different than a y, and, honestly, are you sure there’s not only one of you?

My Very Last Summer

Maybe summer really is just the time between two dates. Objectively, it is. It’s just a season, like fall, winter and spring. And it seems with every summer that’s passed these last few years, it has lost some of what made it such a monumental giant of hope when I was growing up. Where it once was about no school and afternoon TV and your mom waking you up because you can’t sleep the whole day away, now it’s about working and saving and friends you see twice a month.

This is probably my last summer. It might be your last summer too. It’s been fading away for years and now it’s going fast. And I don’t know what it is about growing up that sees so many things lose what made them special. The seasons are all about weather now, and living all about life. And not just the NOW life, but the FUTURE life, the 5-year-later life, the wife-and-kids life. There’s a kind of cold practicality encasing me and I can’t go a day without thinking about how much money I’ll need to make out of university and when I’ll need to buy a car. About how I’m going to avoid being alone.

And I keep going back to Mia and Mya, who have only a tiny chance of being special. It makes me sad, to think of unique things that blend together, that lose themselves in another.

But they’re stupid names, anyway.

Matt