--by Claire Basney
Of the many pairs of siblings at Calvin at least sixteen will never lack for close company: the twins.
Thanks to the registrar’s printout of all the Calvin students enrolled for the 1997 Spring semester, by birthdate, three sets of twins were interviewed and all their fellow lookalikes identified. The three pairs themselves unknowingly formed a spectrum from independent to as near identical in interests as in looks. Kim and Ryan Mejeur both unintentionally began by commenting that they did not know what it was like not to be twin. Yet, in Kim’s words, she and Ryan "are more like regular brother and sister." Ryan agreed. With separate friends and interests, he said that the only place they meet regularly is in track practice where they maintain independent identities.
"I just run in it and he high-jumps," said Kim.
Certainly not all fraternal twins (those from two simultaneously-fertilized eggs) are as easily distinguished as the Mejeurs. In the tradition of literary twins who often play tricks on all their friends and relatives (Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, the two Antipholi and Dromios in The Comedy of Errors) Jillaine and Jennifer Grassmid are much closer in looks and lifestyle. They certainly have wrought havoc on their unsuspecting English 100 professor, and entertained themselves once in high school in switching places in class.
Their similarities were extraordinary: near-identical voices and opinions. Inadvertently speaking for both, Jen summed up: "She understands me; I understand her. We’re always there for each other."
Jill added, "We don’t have the same views on everything--we just get along great!"
Jen and Jill live in the same dorm and share friends, clothes,
and a birthday cakes.
Twins often fall into the patterns of one being dominant and the other passive. Ryan Mejeur attributed the dominant position to his sister, who is older by twenty minutes.
Twins are also segregated into more complex categories; according to an article by Devera Pine in Health magazine, twins can be "sibling attachment identity twins, competitive identity twins, unit identity, interdependent identity, split identity, and idealized identity twins."
In other words, twins can be anything from distrustful of one
another, (split identity), to twins who "won’t make ... decision[s]
without consulting the other" (interdependent identity). Along
with scientific studies of twins comes inevitably, the pseudo-scientific:
the superstitions claiming that twins think so closely together
that sometimes they could approach telepathy. Jen Grassmid explained
that sometimes she and Jill "say things out of the blue--the same
things" but that it was the only really ‘twin-thing.’ 
"A lot of people think we’re telepathic--that is NOT TRUE!" said Jill.
There may be one set interviewed who may be: Ryan and Paul VanderVeen. "We’ve been around each other so long--we look at each other a certain way, and... know what the other is thinking," Ryan said.
According to Paul and Ryan who live in the same off-campus house, they think similar on everything. They fight together, they are outdoors people, and they take the same classes.