Twice the Fun: A Tale of Two Brothers from Different Mothers

Once upon a time, curious Jay wanted to know about his look alikes. There were a couple of sites back then, probably a decade ago, that claimed to be able to find my lookalike and link me up with them. I'm not exactly sure why I wanted to know those I shared strong resemblances with, but I tried them out. Guess what? They all failed with flying colours. Soon enough, I forgot about it. Many years later, however, I did find someone I shared a striking resemblance with. I wasn't searching this time; fate brought us together.

Initially, it didn't occur to me that I shared a resemblance with the individual in question until much afterwards, when we hung out more and people saw us together and usually asked questions similar to, "Are you guys twins?" Such questions popped up regularly, and then, at some point, it struck us that we actually looked alike. What we didn't realise at that time was that we had a lot more in common than just faces.

Fast forward to today, when we refer to ourselves as twins. We'd often tell people that we were actually twins, or at least brothers, and they would believe us. Shortly afterwards, though, we'd make them realise that we really were not—to prevent any further misconceptions that could turn out unhealthy or disrespectful.

It's been well over a year since we met. We've only grown closer ever since. And it seems to us that we actually have a lot in common, as the days roll by and we keep discovering.

"Hey, bro. You should come over to my family's house sometime, you know." I said to him, as I thought it was time we ought to do that with one another as we no longer stay around ourselves like a couple of months ago. He agreed, and so we planned to spend the weekend at my family's house.

Part of the goal was to attend church together on a Sunday and sprinkle Holy Fire with our guitars. Sadly, plans changed, and he came around much earlier instead and would only stay for two days, and we weren't going to jam together on Sunday. No worries anyway, as we decided to make a recording and then share it on Hive. Wednesday came, and, with my very detailed directions so I wouldn't have to search for someone's son, he made his way to our place.

I was more excited to have him around because we were finally connected to the grid on electricity.. He's way more in need of electricity than I am, considering the myriad of things he's involved in, so I really wouldn't have liked to have him bear what I endured in the unmerciful hands of our power holding company. The sad and unfortunate thing was that there wasn't electricity that day or throughout the night. So it was back to the generator that night.

After having random discussions about Hive and some projects we had individually been working on, we went to play. We played with our keyboards and typing sites.

He was already proficient at typing before we met. I wasn't, but I picked that up eventually and went from zero to hero with typing in a little over a year. He's way faster, so there was no point in doing competitions, so we just took turns running tests and observing the other person.

I had just hit my all-time high with a speed of 80 WPM the day before on monkeytype.com, but I could only get real close to it when he was around. He, on the other hand, hit a new ALT high that night.

The last time he checked, he couldn't get beyond 87 WPM. That night, he hit 96 WPM. That was insane! And he was super thrilled and excited about it. He didn't believe that the site was accurate, typed some more on other keyboards and other sites we use, and then figured that he had actually improved but was unaware. He is now a 90-WPM typist. Fabulous!

The next day came, and we made plans to shoot our video and make some juicy music with our guitars. We had no fuel in the generator anymore, so we could only wait for electricity from the grid. Still, just like the previous day, they let us down as they forsook us all day.

We did other things. We mostly discussed our plans for the future, played guitar without electricity—which isn't even the same as when there is electricity—and learned more about ourselves in the process. Another surprise, in the process of learning, was that we had pretty much the same award for being the best behaved student in our respective secondary schools. Interesting, innit?

Where I stay is nothing like the city, and we don't always get what we need nearby. We took strolls around the small town where I reside with my parents, alongside my brother, and we went bread hunting. It took longer than we planned, though. Bread be acting like scarce commodity. Heh

The next day came, and, well, still no electricity. I wasn't surprised, but I was very disappointed that what I expected would happen was happening—that the electricity was back, but we would still experience terrible blackouts like this. And that was how we couldn't play or record our guitars. Such a bummer.

Eventually, the time came for him to leave. My family had already grown fond of him, and so we were going to miss him. This was an exhilarating bonding experience for us.

Thanks for coming around, man. @starstrings01

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Photo credits to my brother. @yinjuolu