Stream Of Consciousness

Today I was thinking about twins. I can't remember why exactly I was thinking about twins, I think it was because I was watching Airline. There was a woman on there with a baby and they wouldn't let them fly because legally the baby was 6 hours too young to fly. So I was thinking, is it measured by the actual time of birth? This is what lead me onto thinking about twins. I was thinking about how far apart they are born. Anyway this next bit won't make sense unless I explain one of my weird theories about life first. Let me go back a few years. As a lonely and misguided teenager I once decided to seek help from my maths teacher, a very wise woman whose views on the world are rather similar to mine. A woman who I grew to regard as more of a friend than a teacher over the years. I told her that I was thinking all these things that I didn't think other people my age were thinking about. When she asked me what sort of things I had been thinking about I chose to disclose a couple of the least depressing thoughts. The first was that I had been wondering what the point of names were. Surely if everyone in the world is individual, how can two people have the same name? Everybody should be able to be known in a unique way. Surnames I sort of understand; they once described an occupation, and I suppose that is a way to be known. But names, common names, names in the top 100 baby names for certain years, why would you want a name that millions of other people have? That doesn't hold any kind of special meaning does it? I just think that everyone should have an individual name, and that name dies with you. The second musing I told her about was the one that made me think about twins today. It's something that crops up in my mind every now and again. I wonder, why isn't age measured from conception? Because surely age is how long you've been alive for. So that would mean that before birth you aren't alive. But you are. I thought about this a lot whilst I was waiting to turn 16 and 18; I remember thinking, if age was measured from conception then I'd have nine months and a week less to wait. It just makes no sense to me. Anyway, this is when I started thinking about twins. For simplicity, let's assume that we're dealing with identical twins. With twins, as long as they aren't delivered via caesarian section, one twin is born a matter of minutes before the other. And that twin is known as the older twin. But these twins are the result of one zygote splitting to form two embryos, so they were conceived at the same time. So they have been alive for the same amount of time. So the twin that is born first isn't actually the older twin, but the faster twin. The same applies with children who are born a matter of days apart in the same year. One child may be born on the 10th of the month, with the other born on the 12th. But if the first child is born a week premature, and the second child is born a week late, then the 'younger' child is actually the older child.

Anyway. Now I've got all those strange thoughts out of my head for the night, I must sleep. It is much too late to be thinking this deeply.