SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL, MIRROR-PERFECT LIVES; WOMEN SHARE `TWILIGHT ZONE' COINCIDENCE.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy

Rod Serling would have loved this one. It plays out like an episode of his old show ``The Twilight Zone.''

Bernyce Cohen was sitting in her bank a few months ago, waiting her turn to talk to a representative, when she noticed a woman was sitting nearby who looked pretty dejected.

A friendly, compassionate person by nature, Bernyce struck up a conversation and found that the woman, Laura Diamond, was recently widowed. Bernyce, also widowed within the past few years, commiserated with her.

``I was sitting there in the bank at a point in my life where I didn't know which way to turn or what to do,'' Laura said. ``I was just so sad, and Bernyce could see that.''

Laura wound up telling Bernyce that she was about to leave on a trip to visit relatives in Chicago.

``Whereabouts in Chicago?'' Bernyce asked.

``Albany Park,'' Laura said.

``Albany Park? I'm from Albany Park,'' Bernyce said. ``What high school did you go to?''

``Von Steuben High School,'' Laura said.

``Get out of here,'' Bernyce said. ``I went to Von Steuben High School.''

They found they had graduated only a few years apart. Pretty soon, a couple of widows who didn't know each other existed only minutes earlier were laughing and carrying on in a bank lobby about mutual friends and people from the old neighborhood they both knew.

Their bank business would wait. They were having too much fun.

``We found out we both lived less than a mile from each other in Albany Park, that our wedding gowns were made by the same seamstress on Lawrence Avenue, that we both caught the subway at Kimball Avenue, and we both worked for the Treasury Department during the war while our husbands were in the service,'' Bernyce said.

``When we parted that day, we hugged and felt a real kinship. We traded telephone numbers and promised to stay in touch.''

How they stayed in touch next would have put a smile on Serling's face.

The two women showed up separately one day at Eden Memorial Park & Mausoleum in Mission Hills.

Bernyce and Laura came to visit their late husbands - Arthur and Bill, respectively - and, to the widows' amazement, found they were buried next to each other in the mausoleum vaults.

Not only that, but next to each husband was an empty vault reserved for their wives when the time finally comes.

``All of a sudden, we realized we were going to be here together some day, too,'' Laura said.

``Eternal friends,'' Bernyce said, laughing.

In the meantime, these eternal new friends with so much in common are settling for dinner and a movie together once a week.

What's this? Is the Los Angeles Unified School District taking on airs? Claiming its diplomas are somehow better and worth more than ones handed out in other school districts?

It seems some office workers at a few San Fernando Valley schools are grumbling because they can't get teacher assistant slots filled with the candidates their principals want because the candidates don't have LAUSD diplomas.

One candidate who graduated from a high school in the Las Virgenes Unified School District recently, and applied to be a teacher's assistant at a local Valley middle school as he begins his college courses, was told he had to pass a high school equivalency test before being hired for the teaching assistant position.

If he had graduated from an LAUSD high school, he wouldn't have to take the test.

``It's just another silly regulation,'' the office worker said. ``What does the LAUSD think, its diplomas are somehow better than the ones earned in other school districts?''

Not better, just more easily monitored, says Anita Ford, assistant personnel director of selection for the LAUSD.

``We're sure that other districts provide excellent education, but we have to know whether or not their graduates, who are applying to be teacher's assistants with us, have taken tests equivalent to the tests required of our high school graduating seniors.

``After all, they will be tutoring our students,'' she said.

The only other alternative is for the LAUSD to chart the tests given by other school districts to see if they are up to snuff with L.A.'s.

``But that's just too expensive for us to do, and to rely on another school district's reputation would be discrimination.

``So, unless an applicant has a LAUSD diploma or has completed 12 units of college work, they have to take a high school equivalency test to be one of our teacher's assistants,'' Ford said.