Written by Deiana Hristov

For identical twins, questions like, “Do you guys do everything together?” and “Can you read each other’s thoughts?” are a normal part of life. It gets tedious, especially if you and your twin are completely different, like sophomores Ronan and Edouard Eltherington.

A frequent misconception about twins is that they are attached at the hip wherever they go. For Edouard and Ronan, that couldn’t be more false. “We just live two completely different lives at school,” Edouard said. “We’re not the type of twins that hang out with each other.”

As well as having different sets of friends, both feel that they are nothing alike in charac- ter. “Personality-wise, I’m totally different than Ed—I find myself totally different,” Ronan said. “He’s more indoor, [and] I’m a more outdoor-type guy. People might think that we’re the same, but in reality we’re born on the same date and [we’re] totally different people.”

According to Ronan, seeing the same face on two completely different people can be confusing. “With us, especially since we’re identical but have totally different personali- ties and hang out with total different groups, I think that factor brings even more of a shock, [because] people can’t see that difference between us—they think that we have to be the same,” he said.

While their relationship is not, as Edouard put it, “super twinny,” the dynamic is dif- ferent than that between normal siblings. “What’s unique about being a twin is that [there is] not necessarily a defined older and younger twin,” Ronan said. “We kind of treat each other as if we’re equals, and sometimes we have to like fight for things because we feel that we’re the same so we both have equal rights to [it].”

There is no denying, however, that being a twin does have its perks, namely the power to take on the identity of the other. “In seventh grade we went to France, and Ronan and I got two separate tickets, and I needed to use Ronan’s ticket to get back to America earlier because we bought his ticket as round trip, so the way we did it is that we switched our passports,” Edouard said. “I basically passed through national security as him. It was pretty funny.”