So You're Keith Fredericks Too Day!

You've met two other guys with the same name as you in your life, but you've never met one who was one half of a pair of conjoined twins before.

"Where'd you grow up?" you ask.

"Santa Fe. We lived there until our uncle sold us to an Eastern European circus. This is really weird to meet another Keith Fredericks."

"It is. It is."

This kind of cuts you a pretty good break. Everyone else has to figure out what kind of small-talk passes when you're talking to a couple of guys who share a hip. If they ask how they're liking the weather, will that be so benign that the twins will see right through it to the question they're dying to ask, which is…

"How do you think they take a shit?"

You hush your date up quick before she tries to raise her whisper above the bar's jukebox volume. Yes, you have it very good tonight. You get to lounge comfortably and look down on everyone else from the height of your conversation jumping-off point. You can feel the eyes of everyone else in your party marveling at how well you and one half of the Fredericks twins are getting along.

"You two have the same name? Wow, what are the chances?"

You and Keith look at the sister of the birthday girl and you both say, "Mm hmm." Several people have tried to sink their meat hooks into your conversation piece, but you've yielded not an inch. And you notice that Keith doesn't invite anyone else in either. Perhaps he's as relieved as you are to have an immediate topic of curiosity at hand. Of course he is. How often does a guy who spent his wedding night attached by skin and bone to his own brother get to say to a stranger, "How odd?"

"I know it's silly to think there'd be any parallels in our lives," you say, "But how many brothers and sisters do you have?"

"In addition to Nick here," Keith says, "I have a sister. Named Alicia. But I haven't heard from her since I was eleven."

"As I said, I know it's silly. But point of fact, I have one brother and one sister too."

"Weird," says Keith.

"Weird," you say.

"And just to see how far this goes," Keith says.

"Yes?" you say.

"Would you happen to be conjoined to one of them?"

You and Keith laugh.

"No," you say. "But I never forget their birthdays."

By the end of the evening, you and Keith will be getting along so well that Keith will tell you about the time he and Nick were watching TV, and Nick wouldn't change the channel from The Price Is Right. So Keith tried to grab the remote out of Nick's hand, but Nick held it away from him, and in the end they just started spinning around in a circle in the middle of the living room.

Happy So You're Keith Fredericks Too Day!