Twin Sister MEANS Twin Sister

Last week I was telling two of the kids about traveling in a plane and what that's like and about a month ago I was helping the little sixth grade girl with a homework paper about knights and suits of armor, so I told the two sixth graders that I would bring in some pictures of when I went to Europe. Sis and I flew over to Amsterdam and then spent some time in Germany, Paris, and London with our older brother, went to tons of museums, etc. Today, I took those pictures and some other stuff that I picked up in Europe to school to share with the kids. The two of them FREAKED OUT over those pictures. I had no idea how utterly fascinated they would be by some old ticket stubs, a map of the Paris Metro, and some random pictures.

I started off by showing them my airline ticket stubs from the flights Sis and I took. We looked up the cities on the map and I told them a little bit about the whole ticket/boarding process. Then I showed them some ticket stubs from the subway and explained how I had to put money into a machine and the ticket spit out of the machine and then I had to put it into the turnstile and walk through to get to the platform for the train. We looked at the subway map a little bit and they were impressed that we managed to find our way around Paris considering everything was written in French.

And then the freak out started. They saw a picture of Sis at the British Museum, standing next to some Egyptian artifacts; I told them that I took the picture, that it was my sister in the picture, not me. The little girl didn't believe me at first, until she saw a picture of Sis and me standing next to each other and then she half-screamed, half-shrieked, startling the whole class.

This is a perfect example of how unbelievably visual these students are. I have told these students that I have a twin sister on numerous occasions. I have said that we look remarkably similar. My name sign IS the sign for twin, only instead of the 'T' handshape, I use the first initial of my name. The little boy in this class has a twin brother himself, and knows that being twins means that someone else in this world looks like you. But the fact that I am a twin did not register for these two until they saw the picture of me and a girl who looks almost exactly like me standing next to each other. They did not really understand that when I sign TWIN SISTER, SAME AGE, FACE SAME (the ASL signs I use), that I mean twin sister.

Their reactions were hilarious. They started going through my pictures trying to guess if it was me or Sis, trying to tell us apart if we were together in the picture, comparing the pictures of us if we weren't together. A couple of times I thought they were going to rip my pictures apart in their frenzy to compare which of them thought it was me or Sis.

Later I was telling a couple of the other interpreters about this and they were equally as surprised by the kids' reactions. It's a little scary to think that I can sign something simple like, "I have a twin sister," and the students don't really comprehend what that means until I show them a visual. What does that mean for the rest of what I'm signing...like in language arts or math class? Yikes, are you getting anything of what I just signed (interpreted)? We came to the conclusion that the little boy who has the twin brother probably did not realize that twin is a generic term, not specific to boys and not specific to his brother and him. There are more twins in this world than just this boy and his brother. I promised them I would bring in a couple more pictures tomorrow; the little girl would especially like to see some wedding pictures. I'm not sure how much more their minds can take...especially when I blow their minds again by showing them a picture of Mom and her twin sister.