At a Graduate Dean/graduate student dinner event that I helped to organize a couple of months ago, I met this guy at my dinner table. Since the dinner, I’ve run into him a few times, but mainly just saying hi during split second infinite corridor passings-by. I felt bad that I didn’t remember his name at first, so I made sure to go back to the dinner guest list to figure out his name. Thursday, I ran into him outside of Kendall. I waved, but he didn’t seem to recognize me at first. When he did, he stopped to say hi, and asked about being a GRT. It turns out that he and I actually met while interviewing for GRT positions last winter, and I had just sort of forgotten about it.

Anyway, so today, I got a friend invite from him on facebook and a message apologizing for having had to rush off at Kendall. Except, I was a bit alarmed, because his profile showed a different first name than the one I looked up on the dinner invite list. Had I been calling him the wrong name all this time? Had we gotten his name wrong at the dinner? I thought maybe it was on of those “I go by my middle name” things, and so I looked him up in the MIT directory.

The directory showed two names, two people, two listings: the one that sent me the facebook invite AND the one at the dean’s dinner. After some snooping around looking at pictures on facebook, I’m pretty sure these are twins, or at least brothers who look extremely similar (ie. twins). The funny thing is that I met each brother separately (GRT interviewing vs. dean’s dinner), so I’m not even sure if they each realize that I also know the other one. There is now also the question of which brother did I actually say hi to those times in the Infinite? Thinking back, there were times when recognition seemed hazy on his part, but maybe I’m just imagining things now that I have new information. And more importantly, how do I tell who is whom when I run into these guys in the future? I’ve never really had to really tell apart a set of twins before.