Today on the Best of Dayton Youth Radio, a story produced at the You Media Center in Springfield in 2016. It was the first Dayton Youth Story produced by twin sisters. Dosjinee and Odyssee are from a close knit family, and when they produced this story, they had pretty much done everything together, birthday parties, vacations, sharing the same toys. In fact, the 17 year olds had never been apart from each other for more than four hours.
Transcript:
Odyssee: I remember when we were younger, we lived in this apartment complex and we was both into the Bratz dolls. We go up to our room with our Bratz dolls and teddy bears and stuff.
Dosjinee: We would just have time of our live. We would make characters out of everything, just us two.
Odyssee: We had a whole town. There was like a town mayor. It was like, we would play it every day. So weird. When we'd put the dolls to sleep, we'd go to sleep. The whole town was shut down.
Dosjinee: There is a point to where when we were younger, we weren't allowed to wear skirts. We weren't allowed to wear shorts that were above our knee. I think that's why we don't have a style now, because our dad always picked out our clothes for us.
Odyssee: We weren't allowed to do a lot of things that would have come to help us become more independent because we always had to do stuff together.
Dosjinee: How does it feel to be a twin?
Odyssee: This is Odyssey. You'll never be lonely. You always have somebody by your side in. They're always going to be your supporter. Like if I look ugly one day you'll be like, "Girl, you look cute today." I know I'm ugly, but I got you to tell me I look cute.
Dosjinee: We've all had a best friend that we just loved so much that we wish we lived with them, wish we could spend all our time with them. I feel like having a twin is like that. You never get lonely. I can never build a relationship with another person like I did with my sister. It's like starting all over again with life.
Odyssee: This is Odyssey. I don't really know if I want to go to college. When I graduate, I plan on getting out of school, going home, lay down, not getting up early anymore. That's what I plan on doing. And she's like certain. She's just ready to go to college right now. We've always been so close. We love it together. I don't think I'll know to do it myself. I'll probably lay down and cry all the time. I'll probably force myself to find the interest, go to college with it and just be there. Just to be with her for no reason.
Dosjinee: And I try to motivate her like, "Come on, let's go. Come to college!" Because I do not want to separate. I think about it and I worry more than you about life. I shouldn't because I'm too young. I should be a teenager and making mistake, but I think about it, and I'm like "Oh no." I lowkey feel like I'm willing to give up my dreams just to stay with my sister, but I can't do that because my sister ain't going to make no money for me. She's not. And that's not even me putting her down because vice versa, same for her. She can't stay with me for the rest of my life because we can't make a family with each other, we can't make a living for each other. We just can't, we have to move on. This is like a relationship. We're going to have to build the Great Wall of China in between us. It's going to be so hard.
Odyssee: I think I'm going to survive. I'm not going to just stop living my life because my sister's gone. I mean I'll lose half of my life, but I'll still live. I'm probably going to have a broke down job flipping burgers, but you know [laughs]
This story originally aired in 2016 when Dosjinee and Odyssee Brown were students at the Springfield Center of Innovation's YOU Media Center. Special thanks to Renee Stratton and Dan Gummel. Support for Dayton Youth Radio comes from the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, Ohio Arts Council and the Vectren Foundation.
This story was created at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
