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Chapter Twenty-five

Mr. Grimes is a twin?!?

Mr. Grimes is a twin!

That is not the explanation I was expecting for his out-of-character behavior. It’s even better.

Twins come up with some regularity in the Kormanverse. Here’s a list of all the twins I can think of—comment if you know of others.

• Captain Alexia Colwin and her goalie brother Josh are mainstays on the Mars Health Food Stars team in the SLAPSHOTS series.
• Dinky and Stan (Stinky and Dan) are identical twin classmates of Jeff and Wiley in THE 6^TH GRADE NICKNAME GAME.
• Shoshanna and Joel Weber are united in their hatred of RESTART’s Chase Ambrose… until they’re not.
• Alita (“Alitalia”) and Anthea (“Anorexia”) are preppy twins who live in Mayer Hall at Vince’s school in SON OF THE MOB: HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE.
• Unnamed identical twin headbangers are Scuzz patrons (and brawlers) whose bar order introduces Simon to “the octo” in SON OF INTERFLUX.
• In the MASTERMINDS books, most of the kids have DNA “twins,” and Serenity also had the Fowler twins.
• The Ottumwa twins—Caleb and Bryan— live in one of the nicest houses in The Pointe in FAKER.
• Bobby Ray—actually Billy Ray and Bobby Joe—is twice as good as any one player, with one brother a great hitter and the other excelling at shortstop in THE TOILET PAPER TIGERS.
• Tom and Sidney Weston had a whole book written about (and named for) them: OUR MAN WESTON.
• Honorable mention no. 1: Latrell thought he saw twins in Katie’s ultrasound in UNGIFTED.
• Honorable mention no. 2: The Gemini constellation—“The Twins”—was the result of a Pant alien’s frustration with parking in the NOSE PICKERS series. The constellation also gets a “twins” callout in HYPNOTISTS: MEMORY MAZE.

In the 1993 book Twins in Children’s and Adolescent Literature: An Annotated Bibliography, GRK shared this information: “Our Man Weston is my first and only book about twins. … The story would have been possible without the Westons being twins (with a number of adjustments, of course), but the book would have been simpler, which would have made it less funny.”

Now, OUR MAN WESTON came out in 1982. If GRK were updating that comment in 2025, I suspect he might say SNOOP would have been less suspenseful without the Grimes brothers as twins. I hope to get some insights directly from Mr. Grimes-the-teacher in one of the two remaining chapters.