SUPERFICIALITY A MOST UNUSUAL THING.

My brother was in Year Eight when I was in Year Twelve. Two things I most remember were a guy in my year, who had a brother in Year Nine and a sister in Year Eight, asking me, “How come you’re so straight yet your brother’s a little rebel?” and another guy in my year telling his mother, who, in turn told my mother, that “You wouldn’t think they were siblings they’re so different.”

My fraternal brother looks nothing like me and he and my mother fight not because they’re so different but because they’re so similar. I am more like my father.

Anyway, I remember on June 13, 1990, I was leaving the library to go and do my end of semester Economics exam, an event that was almost an Olympic gymnastics event in its own right for this reason. My high school decided to dispense with the 9am until 3pm school day for senior students (the junior years started at 9:10am and finished at 3:20pm and the senior students started at 8:30am and finished at 3:20pm Monday and Wednesday, 1:15pm Tuesday and Thursday and 2:40pm Friday. Every morning, we had two hours of one subject and the teachers decided that rather than giving us block exams, that we could do our exams in our two-hour sessions, and Economics was offered on Lines Four and Five. Anyway, Wednesday morning, we had Line Five, and for me that was Modern History and we had our exam that morning. The Line Five had their exam that morning, and the teacher also had a mid-session exam, and a third session exam, instead of sport. I did my exam in the afternoon, instead of sport.

As I was leaving the library, a girl in Year Ten approached me and asked if I had a brother called Greg Floyd. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Well, unless my mother gave birth to another boy who was given up for adoption and I didn’t know about it, yes, I am sure that my brother’s name is not Greg Floyd.

While the girls were more understanding, I had some boys who were blatantly hostile, and one even accused me of lying!

When my brother was in Year Eight, he didn’t want anyone to know that I was his brother, and it became the worst kept secret around the school and I was forced to deny it. I now see that it was blatant neurophobia by the other kids and there was passive neurophobia by my brother.

Anyway, a few weeks after this, a guy approached me and said hello and introduced himself as Greg Floyd. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Greg Floyd had the same colour hair as me except his was straight, he had the same colour eyes as me, he was a bit shorter and his skin was more tanned. He was a nice fellow. If Greg had had a sibling and he and my brother were doing a segment like what was done on Spicks and Specks one night and the host had said, “Now, go and stand beside your real sibling,” and Greg had walked away from me, the audience would have probably started laughing and asked what was going on.

It’s funny how two people can look so much alike but not be related yet two people with the same parents can be chalk and cheese. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be as surprised as there was a set of fraternal twins (one male one female), who would have been assumed to be identical twins if both the same sex and I went to school with a set of fraternal twins (again, one male and one female) and the female had straight dark brown hair, dark eyes and tanned skin, yet the male had curly blonde hair, blue eyes and fairer skin.