60. TWINS DAYS

Twinsburg, Ohio

8/7/2010

Most of my life I lived between 10 and 20 minutes from Twinsburg – I even student taught at Twinsburg High School – so I’ve always been aware of the Twins Days Festival. Not being a twin myself I never had any incentive to go. But where Patricia Schultz commands, I go.

We drove up to my old stomping grounds early in the morning to catch the “Double Take Parade.” Twins Days is the largest gathering of twins in the world and many of the twins show off fabulous floats and crazy costumes in this annual parade. Actually, no they don’t. What really happens is that a bunch of twins sort of wander down the street in whatever they happen to have on. Unless you have some sort of extreme fascination of staring at twins just for the sake of staring at twins this parade doesn’t have a lot of appeal.
Luckily, the parade led us right into the Glen Chamberlain Park where most of the Twins Days events and activities took place. Well, if there had been events and activities. The parade began at 9:00 and had basically petered out by 10:00. The first scheduled event wasn’t to occur until noon, but we assumed there would be plenty to do just wandering around the booths. We were wrong. These booths were your typical fairground carnival type, selling all the usual junk. Two hours of getting henna tattoos and eating elephant ears would be too much for anyone. What does this have to do with twins? There was one table set up by a group called “Mothers of Twins”, but that was it in the whole complex. There was literally nothing for twins or non-twins to do or see for the entire morning. Since the festival is held in a park we let Daniel run around and play for awhile, but we could have done that at home for free.

Never fear, however. When noon came around our wait was richly rewarded by events and activities to whet the palate of even the most adventurous thrill-seeker. Nope. Just kidding. I hate to be cruel, but lameness thy name is Twins Days. First of all, let’s talk a little bit about organization. There were three events scheduled for the afternoon – “Entertainment”, “Twins Contests” and “Twins Talent Show” – but they were each scheduled as going on at the same time. (Their starting times were spread out by half an hour, but each event overlapped for a couple of hours after that.) It made no sense to us why organizers would have absolutely nothing going on the entire morning and then schedule every event to run at the same time.
We decided to bounce around the three activities, so we saw a little of all of them. “Entertainment” started first. A group called “The Average White Broads” sang close-harmony 1950s rock and roll songs. I thought they were fine, but Laura didn’t care for them. I hope the group didn’t notice she fell asleep! Just for the record, the broads aren’t triplets. The entertainment consisted of hired-in acts. (In other words, what you would find at any fair across the country.) We only stayed for part of their set since the “Twins Contests” were about to begin.

The “Twins Contests” were along the lines of “Oldest twins”, “Youngest twins”, “Most alike twins”, “Most unlike twins” (which Laura misheard as “Most unliked twins!”), etc. This was probably the least lame event. It was kind of neat to see the 95-year old twins win the oldest twins gold medal. It was their first time at the festival and they were less than one month older than another set of 95-year olds who had been coming for years. We wondered if the silver medalists were sore about being usurped.

We didn’t see too many of the contests because we wanted to get over to the talent show – the one part of the festival I had been looking forward to from the beginning and still had faith in. Wow. This was the most pathetic display of talentless-ness it has ever been my misfortune to witness. Little girls tripping over jump ropes, dropping batons, and singing off-key to cds with vocal tracks. Old ladies straining at a piano. And don’t get me started on the middle-aged men and their sign language choreography. Over a loudspeaker they kept announcing how many sets of twins and multiples were in attendance – at this point over 1600 – and this was the best talent they could come up with?

Gentle readers, perhaps you think I am being too mean? Lighten up, you say? So I don’t come off as an aimless complainer, here are some ideas to make Twins Days less boring: Why not have workshops for new parents of twins to get advice? (The youngest twins in attendance were less than two weeks old and we saw many, many parents toting newborns.) Genetic researchers were in attendance and were trying to get twins to participate in their studies. Why not have some of these researchers present some of their findings? That would have interest to the general public too. Maybe displays about famous twins and their accomplishments, discrimination against twins, twins in media, misconceptions about twins. There are a million ways to breathe new life into Twins Days.

I must mention that Friday night featured activities and events for twins only (the general public is not admitted), so maybe that’s fun for the twins. And I certainly don’t begrudge them that. No doubt for many twins and multiples the fellowship they receive at this festival is the whole point of going. I’m sure mothers and fathers of newborn twins have a lot to discuss. Kids who get stared at in school can see that they are not the only twins out there. I think that’s great. I really do. But I’m not sure what we were doing there. This was supposed to be one of the 1000 places to see before we die, but our verdict is that without some major changes this would have zero appeal to most non-twins.