THE PROBLEM WITH IDENTICAL TWINS

            Identical twins with overlapping schedules who work as waitresses in the same diner are annoying because befuddled patrons are always calling out “Miss! Miss!” -- inevitably to the wrong one -- only to be told: “Sorry. Not my table.”  This is enough to drive most people insane. I make it a policy to leave a de minimis  tip in such establishments, which has the double advantage of at once expressing outrage about the insolent service and saving money.

 I have, in fact, started a modest trust fund with the unrequited gratuities. Notwithstanding, my shrink thinks that, perhaps, I’m not as insane as I once claimed on the intake form, but, rather, just cheap.

            He so opined in a somewhat beating-around-the-bush fashion in a recent session, stating: “It is likely that you don’t really see any twins in diners at all. You just use this to rationalize your cheapness, which might also explain why you are always so reluctant to pay my bill, until I threaten to sue you.” Doctors of the psychiatric persuasion frequently hide behind such technical jargon and riddle-speak. I paid him no never mind, while also not paying.

            Another problem is when identical twins work as loan officers in the same bank. One will tell you with an ear-to-ear grin that you’d practically have to be a chronic deadbeat loser not to get approved. And the next day, the other one will tell you morosely that, because of your “nightmarish” credit, you have been denied and please don’t ever come back to this bank again. When this happens, I usually leave the loan officer quite a microscopic tip, such as none.

            It is astounding how many identical twins work as loan officers. You would think that they are all genetically pre-disposed to the profession, much in the way that people who are always complaining about not getting paid are drawn to the psychiatric profession.

            Once, when I went to a clothing purveyor to surrender a garment that had only been worn a few dozen times with the tags still in it, the salesman stumbled all over his own words pathetically trying to explain the store’s ridiculous 30-day return policy accompanied by the original receipt. “I suppose,” I told him, “that you don’t recall telling me at the point of sale that I was free to try the shirt out for a risk-free 123 days, and if not completely satisfied, to return it for a full refund with no questions asked, the original receipt be damned.”

            “No, I’m quite sure I never said anything even remotely like that,” he claimed in a convenient fit of amnesia, “for the store’s policy to the contrary is posted all over the place in big bold lettering, and is also reproduced on those tags hanging from the very article which you are now attempting to employ in your scam.”

            “I see,” I said, allowing him to dig himself a hole deeper even than the one in which he now wallowed. Burying him with my vastly superior rhetorical shovel, I added:  “I suppose, then, that those representations about being free of risk et cetera were made by your diabolical twin.”

            “I don’t have a twin,” he lied shamelessly.

 I left him to twist in the wind like things that are often found twisting in the wind by people leaving clothing stores in a huff,  arms draped with perfectly good shirts whose return has been deflected by ignorance and bureaucratic red tape.

This is another problem with identical twins. 

They are prone to deception.

           

            Thus inured to the rough and tumble of this dystopian worldview, I have learned to turn the tables. For example, the frequent visits from the neighborhood process server delivering this or that summons associated with the adjacent homeowner’s crusade to have various and sundry restraining orders issue against my cat  are now met with a cheerful denial that the feline in question is currently -- or at any time heretofore -- guilty of the offenses alleged.

            “Oh sure,” says the auxiliary representative of the law derisively. “Next you’ll tell me that the cat’s twin did all the things that are described in this verified complaint.”

            “Precisely, my good man,” I always reply.   "At this moment, mine is sleeping beatifically on the roof of your car with his muddy paws dangling over your windshield.  Would you like to leave a little something in this jar for his college fund?”

            Predictably, he declines.

            Some people are just stingy.