Case Of The Clark Girls example essay topic

These twins each descended from the symmetrical splitting of a single fertilized egg into cells that contain the identical sequence of billions of even tinier DNA molecules. They occur about once every 250 births, which makes them about a third as common in America as fraternal twins, who descend from two separately fertilized eggs and are no more similar genetically than other siblings. Identical twins are far more familiar than, say, septuplet's, but there is still something a little eerie about them, from the double-your-pleasure Double mint girls to the ghost girls haunting the snowbound lodge in 'The Shining. ' Maybe it's the disorientation induced by a human optical illusion. Maybe it's the fungibility of existence suggested by two lives apparently as interchangeable as bootleg videotapes. If a twin's fate is demonstrably linked to her double's by invisible clumps of nucleic acid, does that mean the rest of us are just as dominated by our DNA?

How important are genes, anyway, in determining whether people are beautiful or ugly, stupid or smart, violent or meek, worried or blissful? Are Hell's Angels really born to lose, as it says on their helmets, or were they just brought up wrong? In the case of the Clark girls, Sharon Inez, 6 pounds 15 ounces, was born at 10: 49 a.m. on December 21, 1961, at Fort Belvoir Hospital, where her father, Staff Sgt. Curtis Clark, was a water purification specialist. Seven minutes later Sherry Lynn entered the world, half an inch longer but eight ounces lighter. When the twins were a year old, their mother, Mary, noted in her baby book that Sharon 'eats very good except for the usual messiness. Likes all foods except spinach.

' As for Sherry, she 'fusses at all mealtimes, but loves spinach. ' Growing up together in a big household in a semi rural corner of Alexandria, the twins were a source of family amusement. At age 3, their older sisters, Sylvia, Tina and Rosalind, would plunk them down in little chairs and dress them as royalty. Sharon, in knee socks and a towel turban, would be the king. Sherry was the queen, festooned with costume jewelry.

'Sharon would have this exuberant clowning expression all the time, while Sherry was always more serious-looking, even as a baby,' says Tina. 'That was one of the ways we could tell them apart. ' Sharon was headstrong and heedless; Sherry was polite and careful. Sherry was sugar, Sharon spice. At school, the girls excelled in drama and song, learning from their father's jazz collection -- 'cocoa music,' they called it in their secret language. They were heavy girls and very dark-skinned, and made to feel bad about it, especially when they passed through Soul Corner, the yellow brick corridor at Fort Hunt High School where the tough kids hung out.

The daily initiation rite on that patch of turf provided a clue on how the twins would confront life's adversities. Sherry would go out of her way to avoid the taunts of Soul Corner. Sharon plunged right through, elbows at the ready, giving as good as she got. 'Sharon,' recalls Sherry, 'would go to bed with her fists balled up in case anybody messed with her in her dreams. ' Sherry, on the other hand, was not as resilient. At age 13, she attempted suicide by swallowing pills.

And a year later, after their father died suddenly of heart failure, Sharon became Sherry's protector.