Mr. Personality

You know how sometimes when your friend is trying to set you up on a blind date, you ask all the appropriate questions and then "Is he cute?" And the response comes back: "...he has such a great personality!!!!" And you know immediately that he is Not Cute and that his great personality is supposed to make up for this?

 But really, the great personality is a commodity that is extremely under-rated. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have one. I myself have a horrible personality. I rub people the wrong way all the time. 

My friend Stratski said that now I have to do damage-control at my new job. I have to make a list of all the people I could have potentially offended and start going around and apologizing to all of them "just in case." This upsets me enormously but Stratski said it is necessary and that neither of us can show our true, real personalities at our new jobs because people wouldn't understand them. We are too brusque.

I just finished reading this book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was a national bestseller when it was first published (around 2003, I think?)

The main character and narrator is Christopher, a 15-year-old autistic boy who can't look people in the eye, can't stand to be touched, can't eat foods that are yellow or brown, and is something of a math genius. Because he loves prime numbers and the story is told from his perspective, the chapters are ordered 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, etc.

Anyways, in chapter 181, Christopher explains why he hates France. This is where his parents used to take him on holiday.  He notes that most people, when they visit the French countryside, will have thoughts like, “Oh it is nice here. There is a field. There are some cows. There is a village in the distance. There are some clouds and flowers.”

But when Christopher sees the field, he thinks this:

1.     There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.

2.    There is a village in the distance, which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.

3.    There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was what was called a ridge and furrow field…

4.    There is a plastic bag from Asda in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.

5.    The northeast corner of the field is the highest and the southwest corner is the lowest…

6.    I can see 3 different types of grass and 2 colors of flowers.

7.    The cows are mostly facing uphill.

Christopher can list 31 more things about this field, which is why he hates France and also new places in general. His mind just goes into overdrive trying to process everything new, so he “freezes up” like a computer. That’s when he puts his hands over his ears and lies down on the ground and starts groaning loudly.

When I read Christopher’s story, it resonated with me deeply because I understood that feeling of not wanting to look at people and interact with them sometimes. It seemed to me that personalities don't fit into neat boxes: "normal," Aspberger's, Autistic. It seems like they are all just a part of one big spectrum and we are all somewhere on it. I got one of the personalities that doesn't find it particularly easy to interact with people, make small talk, or dissemble. Unfortunately, all of these skills are necessary parts of the professional world. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actress. I ultimately decided not to do this because sometimes I had the feeling of getting lost inside a character and I was afraid that one day I wouldn't be able to find myself and get back out. But now it occurs to me that maybe, if I can't enjoy small talk and niceties and being full of sugar and spice, perhaps I could just pretend to be like that. I would be the only one who knows that I am merely pretending to have a great personality.