The Evil Twin

They tell you, in the books and in the hospital and in the Multiple Birth Association coffee mornings, that there is no such thing as the Evil Twin and that it can do irreparable damage to label one twin 'good' and the other one 'evil'. But. Only one of our three children can look our Attack Cat in the eye and laugh in the face of danger. And. Only one of our three children thinks it's funny when her dad goes too far in throwing her up in the air and actually drops her. And. Only one of our children can cackle in a style almost identical to the sound the Wicked Witch of the West makes when flying off after destroying all Dorothy's hopes and threatening her little dog Toto. She blacked her right eye three times before she was 2 and a half. You get the idea? She loves heights, she adores being scared, she eats peanut butter with her fingers out of the jar (ok, lots of kids probably do this but she went for it like a monkey to nits when her big sister - the analytical one - would no sooner eat out of the jar than, well, do what the monkeys do to nits). For the past week, whenever caught red-handed doing something unmistakeably wicked - like whacking her much larger and stronger twin brother over the head with a metal spoon - she has turned to the supervising adult, ignoring the howling victim, and yelled, "I didn't!" I have a very clear vision: if I'm lucky it will be 15 years away, if unlucky it will be 10... Here I am, opening the front door at 2am, with my unrepentant younger daughter grinning at me, and I am saying: "What did she do this time, Constable?" mtc bec ps - written after a particularly spectacular bedtime trauma with this littlest of the little ones tonight... pps - ...you know how all your kids have something special about them? Well this one doesn't just glow, she sparkles; she's 110% courage and I can hardly wait to see just audacious she becomes.