Why does she always get to be Trini just because she's Korean?

Emily's coming home today!!! I'm so excited. Here we are in 2005, which is the last time we were together. (No, not really, but she really should come home more often. We have meat! (She doesn't get a lot of meat in Charleston, cause it's rather costy and she's got bills to pay.)) Sadly, our hair doesn't curl quite like that anymore. Or, mine doesn't. She straightens hers a lot, plus I haven't seen her in five years, so I can't speak for hers. But other than that, even now, I think we pretty much still look the same as in that picture. Not the same as each other. We're easy enough to tell apart, I think. Particularly these days, since if you see one of us in Columbia, it's a safe bet that it's me. If you see one of us in Charleston, it's not me. And in case that's not enough, if one of us looks like the secret footage of a fashion makeover show, it's me. If one of us looks hungry for steak, it's Emily. Simple, right?

In school, people who didn't know us well would have to know that Emily had the longer hair and the longer name in order to tell us apart. Except for Ryan Mercer, who told us apart because I "looked more like a clown." Thanks, pal! He tried to explain once that he just meant that my lips were more red (?), but why not just say that? He put his foot in his mouth a lot, so I didn't really take it personally. At least he knew who was whom. But that long hair long name trick doesn't really work anymore, because we both have long hair, so now when I run into somebody I haven't seen in a while, I think they just blurt out one of our names and raise their eyebrows like "did I get it?"

Once, in elementary school, one of the assistant principals wanted to split us up into different classes, maybe so the teacher wouldn't have to try and tell us apart? Or maybe because she just wanted to see how we'd do separated from each other? So she put me in a dumber class than I should have been in, where I got in trouble for answering the other kids' questions and had to stay in at recess with my head down on my desk. Really the only punishment there was the shame of having all the other first graders walk past knowing I was staying behind. While Emily got to be in the smart class and romp around at recess playing Horsey Court with her friend. She says Horsey Court wasn't a real game; they just ran around laughing and called it Horsey Court. For this and many other reasons, I am very glad she's my sister. I can't imagine being twins with somebody who just played Power Rangers at recess like every other kid.

Incidentally, if you'd asked either of us what our favorite movie was at the time that picture was taken, we would have said Uncorked, due in large part to this scene (not so much the last 20 seconds or so). It's an odd little movie but that song is so beautiful. Like Emily!