2

HE'S

HER

SISTER

by

Sometimes it's fun being twins, the way my sister, Joan, and I are, but other times it can lead to weird and embarrassing complications, as you will see.

When we were little, everybody thought it was very cute, our looking so much alike even though we were boy and girl, and our parents even dressed us alike much of the time. But by the time we were adolescents in highschool there could be no doubt in anyone's mind that I was John and a boy, while my sister was Joan, a girl.

But in many ways we were still very much alike; we were both blondes, we both had almost identical oval faces, and we both were the same height within an inch or less. For a girl, Joan was rather husky, although she had a lovely feminine figure, while I was on the slender side for an active and athletic young fellow. And, as I said, our faces were almost exactly alike in every feature.

Joan was quite athletic, and her senior year in highschool she was captain of the girl's tennis team, and could give any member of the boy's team a real work-out on the court. That same year I was captain of the swimming team and had an impressive number of wins in the fifty-yard and hundred-yards sprints. After the winter swimming season, I used to play a lot of tennis, some of it with Joan, and I

could beat her most of the time if I really worked at it. And this was what got me into the terrible mess I'm going to tell you about.

It was a big week-end, late in the Spring of my senior year at high school, and there were lots of sports planned, including a tennis match between our girl's team and the freshman girl's team from nearby State College. On the schedule were lots of parties and dances and picnics, as well as the athletic events. Ourmgirl's tennis team was all psyched up and dtermined to win their match, and I think my sister, Joan, would have been ready to cut her own throat if she lost her match against the captain of State College's freshman (or freshgirl) team.

They played the girls doubles on Saturday morning, and Joan and her partner managed to win. During the couple of hours break for lunch, Joan had the accident that got me into the most horrible predicament of my whole life. While running down some steps, Joan tripped and twisted her ankle badly. Immediately the whole side of her foot began to sweld up and turn purple. It must have hurt her a lot even as we were carrying her to the girl's dressing-room in the gym, but what upset Joan most was the fact that she obviously would not be able to play in her singles match that afternoon.

While waiting for the doctor to arrive all the girls were talking at once, wondering how they could juggle the matches around so that we would have a chance of winning. As a joke, someone suggested that I should take her place and play her singles match. At least I thought it was a joke, but everyone was studying me seriously, wondering if the deception