This is a random idea, but I’ve thought about this for a while and concluded that one’s personality isn’t just something manmade or something you always develop as you grow.

I think you’re just flat out born with your own personality. Of course, I’m exaggerating here but some babies are born squinty-eyed and cackling hysterically; some screech like banshees.

Some babies are born wide-eyed and silent and some are sliced open out of their mother’s stomachs. Those babies are what I like to call the stubborn mules. They were too determined to sit on their butts and said, “There’s no way I’m not coming out that other way because I don’t feel like it.” C-section babies are by far the most spoiled.

So however the kid is born you can interpret the loud-mouthed one to eventually and evidently become a shrieking toddler; a sass-mouthing child; a whining teenager and typically an adult who’s opinion is never solicited but they open their mouths anyway.

Or you might consider a child who came out with their eyes the size of quarter dollars and their lips shut so tightly they almost look sewn together–to be a thin, hard lipped, introspect; what we would now call a silent genius.

Or they might become a follower, the bland kind of person with “no personality”, about as sour as their parents’ marriage and as plain as your eggs sunny side up without pinches of salt.

And then there are the class clowns; the babies born consumed with giggle fits. What I’m wondering is what kind of pregnancy did that mother and child endure to have fallen into this world consumed with laughter. The more I think about it, the more intrigued I am.

Point is, personality can be modified, I guess. It can be reshaped, molded, because children are malleable. But, nevertheless, we’re all inevitably born with one thing in common—actually several things in common, but one thing certain—our personality.

Notice how you can snatch a box of crayons from one child and while one might sit there and begin wailing their little heart out, another child might get up and attempt to snatch it back and in the process, probably smacking the other child upside the head. And then there’s the child who sits in silence and watches the other kid scribbling violently with their handful of stolen of crayons while they all go dull in their chubby hand, from the red crayon to apricot and black. In other words: me.

Notice how you can ask a child, “Is that what really happened?” While one kid might nod sheepishly and drop his eyes to the ground, face flushed red, another child may lift his chin and elaborate on the story in a wily, effortless way.

  Among the endless persons and innumerable personalities in the world, which one are you? Which one am I? Under which category do we fall? Who determines how we’ll end up? Who knows? Our parents? The government? Society? Maybe God? Psychologists? Neurologists? Physiologists? Psychiatrists?

The medicine we might have taken surely wouldn’t know. The food we eat and clothes we wear and words we say have no clue. The papers we write and the homes we live in can’t speak for us. Maybe the lines we color in and out of with our dull, apricot-colored crayon know.

Because I sure don’t.

Margorie Clemente  is a senior English major. She can be reached at [email protected].