[music playing]

Narrator: They're just bickering with each other.

Mark: Will you stop?

Narrator: Still, both agree fire is a far worthier opponent.

Mark: Fire is probably the fiercest and most unpredictable force of nature.

Narrator: And fire fighting is the love of their lives.

Mark: It's a rush.

Jerry: The adrenalin's natural.

Mark: It's an adrenaline rush, it's a high.

Narrator: What makes Jerry and Mark unique, though, is not what they do, but that both chose to do it.

Mark: We made Ripley's Believe it or Not.

Narrator: Mark and Jerry are identical twins.

Mark: Uh—

Jerry: Cut that out.

Narrator: Separated at birth.

Mark: Live 60 miles apart.

Jerry: 65.

Mark: 65 miles apart.

Narrator: And adopted by two different families.

Mark: Never even meeting him before, our lives were the same.

Jerry: We wake up—

Mark: Our Sunday morning regime was the same.

Jerry: Three Stooges.

Mark: Three Stooges Laurel and Hardy. John Wayne movies.

Narrator: They finally met at age 31, when a fellow firefighter spotted Jerry and noticed an uncanny, if slightly slight a resemblance to Mark.

Jerry: Oh, I wish I had—

Mark: It's bought and paid for.

Narrator: They discovered one similarity after another.

Mark: First thing was our bald heads.

Jerry: Same double chin.

Mark: Well mine's a triple.

Jerry: The way we walked.

Mark: The way we walked, the way we drank a beer. The way we held our beer.

Jerry: Pinky underneath.

Mark: Pinky underneath, always.

Jerry: Our mannerisms.

Mark: The way we laughed.

Narrator: So with all these things in common—

[laughter]

It may not be a coincidence that Mark and Jerry both fight fire, or that both enjoy other things—

Mark: White water rafting.

Narrator: That other people might consider scary.

Jerry: It's in the blood. It's in the blood, the genes, wherever the doctors want to put it.