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.