Personality theft

When I was a kid, I thought it would be sooo cool to be a twin. My twin and I could take turns going to classes, astonish our friends by walking out one door and back in through another, keep our parents in a perpetual state of confusion over who was who. Of course, there are some obvious problems with this fantasy, the most obvious being the fact that I don't actually have a twin.

I still wonder, though, whether twins could swap not only identities, but personalities as well. If one is vivacious and outgoing, and the other quiet and cerebral, could the quiet one become an extrovert simply by pretending to be the other? For that matter, would this work with anyone, not just twins?

A while ago, I read a book by Ruth Reichl, who was the New York Times food critic for a number of years. Rather than saunter into a restaurant and receive the grand tratement afforded someone in such an obviously influential position, she would dress up as a nobody (actually one of a wide array of nobodies) and see how the restaurant in question treated ordinary people.

The funny thing about this change of character was that her change in appearance produced an equivalent change in her personality. When she dressed as a grand dame, she became fussy and demanding. When she wore her slinky black dress, she became flirtatious, and when she wore a crazy clownish outfit, she became the life of the party and everybody wanted to be her friend.

I've always thought that personalities are immutable. Our attitudes may change - we may harden on some things and soften on others - but I believed that the core of who we are, introvert or extrovert, active or passive, doesn't change. I wonder now whether this is true. As a very young child, I was friendly and outgoing. There was a big sports camp behind my grandparents' house and when I was 3 or 4, I invited one of the camp counsellors in for tea. (35 years later, Bob still spends a few weeks every summer at a running camp in the Poconos, and still visits my grandparents).

But then something happened and I became, not an introvert as such, but certainly much less outgoing. This was not entirely without benefit - inviting strangers in for tea isn't always a sound approach - but I spent a lot of years feeling socially inept. This is probably not a unique experience, I think most teens go through that stage, but even today, I don't really feel entirely at ease going into situations where I have to meet new people.

The turning point came in the summer of my sophomore year in college, when I had a job as a social director at a small resort. My work consisted largely of shooting clay pigeons and skimming the bets on the horse races. It was a good summer. But as a social director, one has little choice but to be, well, sociable, and so I learned how. I faked it.

Completely by chance, I read an article this morning on how to be bold. The first bit of advice it provided to those who aren't was, basically, fake it. Interesting.

So even if I had a twin, I guess I couldn't swap classes with him, but maybe I could swap identities. Come to think of it, maybe I do have a twin after all.

Pride cometh before the fall

If you haven't read my 'where do they go' post (the next one), please do so before reading this one. Not that anything bad will happen if you don't - you won't have 10 years of bad luck, you won't lose your job or your house and gas prices are already on the upswing anyway. But really, go ahead. I'll wait...

OK, so having written that in a fit of overweaning pride at the start of my trip last week, I was taken down a peg or two when, on the last leg of my journey, I myself became...That Guy Who Didn't Show Up For The Flight.

After spending the better part of the afternoon and early evening waiting in the Halifax airport (I met some very interesting people during my 5 hour bender) for a much-delayed flight to Newark, and after arriving in Newark and taking the train to the parking lot instead of to the next terminal, I was, shall we say, more than fashionably late for my flight back to London.

This little karmic episode should probably give me pause next time I decide to wax curmudgeonly about someone else's behavior. But it won't, of course...

Where do they go?

We've all heard them - announcements at airports calling for 'passenger Smith travelling on flight 827 to kalamazoo, your flight is ready for departure. Please go to gate 27 immediately!'

Where did he go?

After packing carefully and rising early to make the trek to the airport, after enduring considerable inconvenience at the checkin desk and after being de-belted and de-shoed by the TSA, they just, what, forgot that they were travelling? Got absorbed in a magazine? Fell down drunk in a bar?

It just seems terribly odd that people simply disappear from the airport. Maybe passenger Smith was a spy and has killed someone silently in a bathroom stall, taken his passport, changed his appearance and slipped undetected on a flight to Beijing. Or maybe Smith is an international criminal who was apprehended, quietly so as to not cause a stir among the other travellers, as he waited, shifting uncomfortably on the hard plastic chairs. For him, the loving arms of the American penal system might just be welcome relief after the rigors of air travel.

Or maybe, just maybe, passenger smith is simply one of those unfathomably stupid people which exist everywhere, but seem to be especially plentiful in the airports of America. They all come from the same mould, these sloppy-dressing, Nintendo-playing, ringtone-flaunting, loud-farting, cellphone-talking representatives of the United States. With emissaries like these, it's little wonder that much of the world dislikes Americans. I would too if they were the only ones I'd met.

So long, passenger Smith, your flight has departed without you. And the world is slightly better off for your staying.