It’s like they won the lottery…twice.
Having a sibling comes with tons of benefits. You have an instant best friend, a partner at almost everything, someone you can tell your secrets to, and a bunch more.
You share your firsts with them, create those happy and sad memories together, and unknowingly help each other grow in so many aspects of your early lives.
But everything in life becomes extra if you have a twin.
Wouldn’t you agree? Life is even more exciting if you have a twin. Someone you’ve already been with since day 1! And it doesn’t really matter if you look like each other, what matters most is that you jive at absolutely everything.
These twin sisters can pretty much relate to this feeling. But brace yourselves because they are not the typical twins that you might have in mind.
Meet, Hayleigh and Lauren Durrant, the biracial twins!
Usually, when we talk about twins, the first thing that comes to mind is that they look alike. At the very least, they should resemble each other’s physique, particularly their colors.
But not these twin sisters, Hayleigh and Lauren, being biracial twins, look obviously different. The kind of difference that you will see at first glance.
Lauren is white while Hayleigh is black! They’re referred to by their classmates as “milk chocolate” and “white chocolate”.
Having twins is already not common, let alone biracial!
Their parents, Dean Durrant and Alison Spooner were in total shock when the latter gave birth to the twins back in 2001.
Hayleigh got her looks from her dad while Lauren got hers from mom. It’s incredible since having biracial twins is not very common. Calling it “rare” is even an understatement.
People consider this phenomenon as one in million!
However, they also had their fair share of challenges while growing up.
In their exclusive interview with The Sun in 2019, Hayleigh said, “Some people can be really rude. They’ll say, ‘You’re lying, you aren’t twins — prove it!’”
“So we’ll reel off the same address or pull our passports out. It’s nice to see the shock on people’s faces. When we went to college it was difficult because there were lots of groups of Asian, white and black kids,” she added.
But for Lauren and Hayleigh, being biracial twins was still so much fun.
“We were like celebrities when we were kids,” Hayleigh said. “Everyone wanted pictures with us and would ask us how it felt to be twins but different. To us it was normal.”
The family soon found their way to the Guinness World Records after having another pair of biracial twins!
Back in 2009, Alison gave birth to Leah and Miya, another beautiful pair of babies from different races. Baby Miya has dad Dean’s skin color while Leah got mom’s.
The couple then was blessed with 2 pairs of biracial twins. If having biracial twins is one in a million, then just how rare are 2 pairs of it?
Despite the difference in skin color, all of them still get along so easily.
“The younger ones idolise the older ones and are always copying them. It’s like having two Mini-Mes,” said their father.
“They are best friends and close in every way, apart from looking different. It took me some years to understand the science of how they could appear so different,” their mom added.
Inseparable as they may seem, the older twins start to have differences as they mature.
Lauren and Hayleigh always wanted to be together. They’d share each other’s clothes and play with the same set of toys. The twins even had the same interests in what they watched on the TV and the types of books to read.
However, as they grow older, they attended different classes at secondary school. In fact, during the time of their interview with The Sun, Lauren and Hayleigh were studying different courses. Art and Business Studies and Drama and Theater Studies and Sociology, respectively.
Despite the difference in the course that they took in college, they still share a bunch of similarities.
“We are so the same in some ways,” Lauren said. “We say the same things at the same time, and finish each other’s sentences.”
On the other hand, the other member of the younger twins, Leah, described her older twin sisters as “heroes.”
“I like my older sisters. We want to be like them when we get grown up,” she explained.
While Miya referred to Hayleigh and Lauren as the “best.”
She said, “They teach me that it’s the best thing in the world to have a twin sister, even if you are not identical.”Having a sibling is truly a blessing. It doesn’t matter if you’re twins or not. The most important part of having siblings is being able to create wonderful memories together and the ability to understand each other even without saying a word.
As of this writing, Lauren and Hayleigh, and Miya and Leah, still remain as the world’s only two pairs of biracial twins.