Linda, why don’t you and Fred belong to Ridgemont Country Club?  You know so many people there.

Because I hyperventilate when I go there.

Why? 

I don’t want people looking at me and judging how I’m dressed and watching what I eat.

What about golf - a lot of your friends play golf.

I hate golf.

What about Fred?

Oh Fred would love it there – you know him – he loves to talk to people.  He would make friends with everyone.
So you never go there?

Only when someone invites us for one of the lobster dinners.

Speaking of lobster dinners, remember when we used to go to the club for dinner all the time with Mom and Dad, and you would always get a lobster.

I do remember that – the food was good there.

I don’t remember the food being good.

That’s because you don’t eat lobster.

So what would I have had – steak and baked potatoes?  That’s so boring.

 Mom and Dad must have thought the food was good.  We went there a lot.

No - they didn’t like the food so much – they just wanted to use up their monthly minimum dining fee.

Didn’t we used to go with the Levitts or the Kravitzes?

Yes, and once Myrna and Henry Rosenberg took us all to dinner there.

The Rosenbergs took us to dinner?

Yes, I think they were reciprocating for something Mom and Dad had done.  Anyway, Dad told us before we went, that because the Rosenbergs weren’t really wealthy, we shouldn’t order anything too expensive.

So what did we order?

You ordered a lobster, of course! So I decided that since you were having the most expensive thing on the menu, I would get the cheapest.

What was it?

Chicken A La King!

Oh – I am gagging.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.  But afterwards, Dad told me he thought I did a very nice thing and he appreciated it.

Oh sure – he always liked you better than me.

At least you got a good dinner.

I liked eating there, Sandy – everyone knew who we were, including the waiters and waitresses.

And I’m sure Mom and Dad made us get dressed up to go there.

Sandy, Mom and Dad made us get dressed up to go to the bathroom.

 How about when Mom took us to the pool at the club, though – that was fun. 
 
Yeah, because she would just drop us off and go have a golf game or play cards inside the club house.

So we could lie in the sun and get tan –

And do whatever we wanted without someone watching over us.

Practice our diving and swimming underwater –

And do handstands in the shallow end, and dive for pennies in the deep end.

And I remember when I was really little, Linda, I would pee in the pool all the time.

Now you tell me!! No wonder we didn’t have any friends.  You didn’t really do that, did you?

Oh yes I did.  I thought no one would be able to see, so if I had to go – it seemed so much easier than getting out of the pool, getting dried off, walking across the parking lot and going inside – so I would just do it.

I’m sure no one could tell you were peeing, Sandy.

Of course they could, Linda, - you think they couldn’t see the yellow stream coming out of me when I would hang onto the side of the pool?

Well, everyone probably did that.

You didn’t, Linda.

No, I probably peed in my pants.  Talk about embarrassing, Sandy – do you remember those matching bathing suits we had – the blue and green print ones with the built in boobs?  You could press on them and they would stay dented in.

Hideous!

How could we buy them?

Buy them – how could we wear them in public?

We had no taste.

Speaking of taste - remember the snack bar, Linda? Mom would give us a book of chits to use there to buy our lunch.
They had the best cheeseburgers and French Fries – I loved them.

Is that the last time you ate cheeseburgers, Linda?

Probably.  And how about the frozen candy bars -

We would get them in the middle of the afternoon for a snack –
Frozen Milky Ways and Three Musketeers –

And Charleston Chews- the best!

We did have fun, but I don’t remember that there were a lot of people there.

We had friends there to hang out with – Beverly and Nancy, and Joanie Minton.

But no boys.

I think there were always some boys our age around that we might have been interested in.

But they didn’t hang out near us – they were probably put off by our pointy bosoms.

Let’s face it, Linda. We weren’t exactly country club material.
No we weren’t, Sandy – especially after we almost got kicked out – or got Mom and Dad kicked out.

What? What did we do?

You don’t remember the shower shoe incident?

No.

Okay, remember the women’s locker room where we changed into those lovely bathing suits?

Yes – with the communal showers and dressing rooms.

And remember the paper shower shoes?

Oh yeah – we wore those in the showers?

No – we were supposed to wear them from the shower room to walk back to the locker room.

Oh right – and they would start to disintegrate as soon as you put them on your wet feet after you got out of the shower.

Well, we took a whole bunch of those paper slippers and stuffed them all into the shower drains.

Why?

Because we were idiots.

And what happened?

All the showers flooded and it made a complete mess.  And Phyllis, the locker room attendant, found out it was us and called Mom and Dad.

So we got in trouble.

Of course.  We had to write a letter of apology.

To who?

Phyllis.

Why her?

Because she had to clean it all up.

And were we blackballed from the club?

No, we kept going back. I think we were proud of what we did.  We even had our wedding shower at the club.

That’s right – The Rosenbergs,  Levitts, and Kravitzes  gave that shower for us.  I think Nancy Kravitz gave us each
matching cookie jars.

Knowing us, we were probably wearing matching dresses.

Well at least we weren’t wearing the paper shower slippers!

Biographical Note: Sandy Lichtenstein grew up in Providence, Rhode Island with her twin sister Linda, and her older sister, Joan. They were always told that their girdles should be tight, and their Bermuda shorts loose.  “Decent” meant that you were dressed appropriately, dogs were pets that other families had, your teachers were never wrong, the solution to all your problems was fresh air and exercise, and you always had to wear socks with your sneakers because Calvin Coolidge’s son died of an infected blister from going sockless while playing tennis.  This piece is part of a book Sandy is writing with Linda, about growing up as a twin. It is a series of conversations exploring their memories of shared experiences, like their double wedding, (but not their husbands), that are sometimes the same and other times very different. See Author Index Prose L-Z for more of Sandy's stories.