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2000-08-17 | 02:04:21

People will say things to a checkout clerk that they wouldn't say to family or friends. Like when I found out I was pregnant, I told half a dozen strangers I met while running errands, even though I couldn't yet bring myself to tell any family or friends. Another thing you'll tell strangers first is about your big plans and schemes. That's how I ended up telling the checker at Costco that I'm thinking about maybe adopting someday. But what she told me was even more interesting.

We were talking about kids and she mentioned that she had a 19-year-old and an 8-year-old. I said something about how she had spaced them out quite a bit and she said yeah, she waited until she couldn't remember what it was like anymore. So I said I had the girls, twins, and then my son three years apart. And I said that sometimes I think about maybe when they're quite a bit older, adopting.

"That's great," she said. She hesitated an instant. "I'm adopted."

"Oh yeah?" I said, hoping to sound encouraging. (When people tell me stuff like that, I can never think what to say.)

"I'm a twin, too, actually." She told me how her twin's mother--whom she doesn't think of as her own mother--had only wanted a boy, so she kept the boy and adopted out the girl.

So I made a grim face and said some inanities about how people are strange and when I was pregnant guys would find out we were having two girls and tell Duff, "better luck next time." Which made him mad. And I tried to send her a lot of you-seem-like-a-good-person-and-I'm-sorry-that-happened-to-you vibes.

Then it seemed like we were done but I felt like we had left things on a sad note so I said, "Did you grow up around here?"

"In Concord." She hesitated again. "Actually, I knew my twin. I never looked for them, but I ended up going to high school with him."

"Wow!" I said.

She hesitated again.

"We even dated."

"Oh my God!"

"We knew that we looked alike. People talked about it. So one day we brought in our birth certificates and compared them."

"Like in The Parent Trap."

"Yeah. We never knew about each other, that we had a twin. So then I met her, my mother, at his house. When she saw me she said, 'I never thought I'd see your face again.'"

"Unbelievable."

"Yeah, and I looked just like her." She made a gesture with her hand that encompassed her face. She was interesting looking, like a soccer Mom type with pale skin and and very dark eyes and thick, glossy black hair. I said it seemed like things had worked out better for her anyway and she said "Oh yeah." I asked her if it seemed like her brother was troubled, because of having a screwed-up mother, and she said she thought he might have had some problems later on, yeah.

And that was her story, one of many no doubt, and I told her I thought it was incredible and that truth really is stranger than fiction (in a less-cliched-than-that way) and to take care and then we were done and I went to meet my Mom at the food court.

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