by John Griffin - December 17, 2007
I know this family of Dwyers. There are at least 13 of them in it. Some claim there’s 21, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it. Thirteen seems a good enough number. The oddest thing about this brood of Dwyers is that they’re all the same; I mean of course, they all look exactly alike. I think there’s a suggestion of Dwarfism in the breed, which merely adds to the oddity of their sameness. Each member of the family measures exactly the same height too, 5’3”, not a millimetre more or less. Even the mother and father standing sockless [and shoeless] come in at 5’3”. Isn’t that crazy? Not a fraction as crazy as what I’m about to disclose: Not only do all the Dwyers make a perfectly level line if you lined them all up along the wall and drew a line across the tops of their heads, they all look exactly the same, like nature played a very very sick trick on them. What do you call 13 children that look the same anyway? Damned if I know. It’s like there were two sets of identical sextuplets, with one to spare, who looked exactly like all the others. Got that? No. OK so, thirteen is called tredecaplets. Fancy, huh? How do they look then, this litter of self-replicated multiples? Squat, bulbous of head, wiry-haired, rosy of jowl, barrel-chested, bandy-legged, with intense musculature of fist, full lipped, blue-eyed and stocky as a sack of young spuds. The men are all male versions of the women, and the women are all female versions of the men. In brief, one cannot tell the one from the other.
To add to the confusion this gaggle of propagated sameness all enjoys the exact same sense of fashion, so that the only gender distinguishing characteristic, if one could call it that, is that the women all prefer to carry a handbag. But how many times have I passed one of them on the street, and greeted them thus, ‘Hello, Ned, and how are you today?’ only to be scowled at by a female version of Ned? In the innocence of my heart. Really, how am I to know which member, or gender, of the Dwyer clan is out and about today or any day? I only know Ned because Ned was in my class at school, thick as a pallet of 2X4’s, of course, but an excellent athlete, and he did one killer imitation of Elvis…sang You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound-Dog like the maestro himself, replete with jellied swivelling leg. Had us all in stretches. I never knew any of the rest of the Dwyers, but I always felt that knowing one was knowing the whole lot. No disrespect to their individuating sameness, I’m sure, but the way Ned acquitted himself on the rugger pitch made me postulate what damage all 15 [Ma and Da included] would inflict – the girls would make fine prop forwards every bit as much as the men, for neither gender sprouted that unnecessary appendage of any excellent prop forward, a neck. I’d hate to get a knock-down tackle from a Kate or an Ann or a Patricia Dwyer. I’d venture the exchange would leave a man on the flat of his arse for at least a week.
This proliferation of Dwyer sameness got me thinking recently about genes and DNA and zygotes and fertility and nativity and memes, and all that schlock, and of course all this heady cogitating didn’t get me very far until I came across this horrific News item concerning my native island home: Recently, an experiment was conducted up at Trinity College, where 70 female students and 70 male students were photographed in exactly the same pose. Then the smart-ass bright spark in charge got the wild notion to superimpose all 70 female images on top of one another and then, after that, to do the same for the 70 male images. Guess what he found? You won’t believe this – He created a pair of identical twins! Imagine, fudge a little on 70 Irish men and women, toss the lot into some deconstructive computerized photo-shop job, and the result that will be spat out [ignoring all the obvious differences, and there are many] is that all Irish people are mild variations of a cross-fertilization of our Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and Sinead O’Connor. That’s what we all look like when our essence is distilled down to its barest bones. Every single man, woman and child on this infernal island is a latent hybrid of Ahern and O’Connor. It’s like these two gobdaws spawned the whole damned lot of us. Well, no wonder we’ve imported all those Polish and Latvian and Ukrainian and Lithuanian young men and women: We’re trying to expand, enlarge, and open up the gene pool. We need all that new blood to save our future generations from this genetic curse, and I dare say we’ll be a most beautiful race once this eugenic experiment is concluded. Ah, who am I kidding? Haven’t we already got the best looking buxom lassies on the planet? Sure we have…if you’re into the encephalitic shaved-head look.
Anyway, the Dwyers have become quite infamous in our little town. Some believe there’s really only a pair of them in it, and that these two mischievous devils get up to all sorts of identity thievery, etc, except in their case they’re only robbing from themselves. Or maybe, as another has suggested, it’s a ruse to put the Revenue boys off the scent…an elaborate game if such it be. Another person has speculated that there’s only the one Dwyer, Ned himself, who’s a bit of a transvestite. But that’s just ridiculous, for what kind of a cross-dresser would be content just to sport a drab old handbag on his hairy arm? For all you know, my detractor replies, Ned might be up to his ass-crack and bollix in women’s lingerie. True, true, but outward appearances do stand for something, no? Maybe it’s like the Jacksons, he continues, you know that Michael and Janet is the same person, right? He’s got a good point there, except there are many folks out there who have been in the Dwyer homestead and have actually seen all baker’s dozen of them frolicking about. Indeed, my own mother is such a witness, and I always believe her testimony. And her story needs to be told.
She was parked outside the post office one day, idling, waiting for the Da to send his biological concoctions off to the Orient, when she was privy to the most unnatural display. The Dwyers, who live a few houses down from the P.O., and within spitting distance of the bus stop, were all out on the street, waiting for a bus. Only one, however, was laden down with a suitcase, all the rest were anxiously playing pocket billiards, looking vacantly about, chatting, waiting. Presently, the bus arrived, and the brood started up such a chorus of weeping and wailing, kneeling down and pawing the earth, that my poor shocked mother found herself overcome with tears. It was a heart-breaking scene. The mother-Dwyer was inconsolable. The father-Dwyer had to turn away from the departing bus, while the siblings either ran after it or threw themselves prostrate on the street, so overcome were they with grief. My mother thought this is exactly what an old American Wake must have looked like, for clearly the departing Dwyer was emigrating, and the rest would never see him more. She was wiping her tears when she noticed that the Da too had been watching this scene unfold. Clearly he was also distressed because he went over to say a few words of condolence to the senior Dwyer. But instead of coming away with a grievous expression, befitting the mood of the solemn occasion, he was falling all over the street laughing. Mother was very upset that he would show such disrespect for the poor family, and she was fully prepared to give him a good tongue-lashing when he got back into the car. But she didn’t have time for that.
‘Did you see what I saw?’ says the Da.
‘I certainly did.’
‘And did you think what I thought?’
‘That you were most inconsiderate?’
‘Not at all … sure, when I went over to Dinny Dwyer, d’ye know what he said to me?
‘Pray tell.’
‘He said that his beloved son wasn’t emigrating at all at all … that he was just off to Dublin for the weekend. Can you beat that for sorrowful inbreeding?’ And with this the two of them split their holes laughing.
John Griffin is a writer living in Ireland.