Twins have an enduring appeal. The Greeks even found them in the heavens, naming the constellation Gemini for Castor and Pollux. Perhaps the rarity of twins accounts for the fascination.
At Eldersburg Elementary School, on the other hand, twins are not so rare.
Instead of gazing up into the night sky for Castor and Pollux, the 5-year-olds have only to look around. Eldersburg's kindergarten, with a total of 113 children, has four sets of twins, all of them boys.
There are Mathew and Nicholas Rowe, Dwight and Dwayne Poole, Daniel and Andrew Shaw, and Christopher and Timothy Tivvis.
In all the rest of the student body, grades one through five, there are a total of four more sets of twins.
On a recent afternoon, all the children are absorbed in making marvelous creations, gray squirrels that will frame a poem -- "gray squirrel, gray squirrel, swish your bushy tail . . . "
Twindom was generating a certain excitement -- because a birth day party for twin classmates meant cupcakes for a snack.
The kindergartners take the abundance of twins in stride. "I sometimes think that Dwight is Dwayne and Dwayne is Dwight," said Brian Rule, "but mostly I don't."
No one else would admit to any confusion.
"I look just like my brother, but nobody ever gets us mixed up," Christopher Tivvis reported, seeming surprised at the question.
"Most of the twins are split between us," said JoAnna Onnen, one of the two kindergarten teachers, "so to us it's just about like any other child."
She added that neither she nor Ann Green, the other teacher, gets the twins confused.
The twins, of course, are different children, even if they look alike.
Andrew Shaw said he likes reading best. Brother Dan likes playing in the sandbox.
Dwight Poole likes string beans, but Dwayne doesn't.
Christopher Tivvis had cupcakes at his birthday celebration; across the classroom his brother Tim proudly wore an identical birthday crown and ate his birthday cookies.