Sophie Henry

Last week I was in the shower, and I was thinking about what my personality should be. I was like, “Oh shit — I’m back at Yale,” you know. I can seem way cooler to the people back home. How should I dress? What should my facial expressions be in my mirror selfies? Instagram is my fucking oyster. Should I opt for those fartsy boys (not gassy — faux-artsy) who stand in the middle of an open field staring intensely at the ground like they’re watching fire ants perform Cirque du Soleil? Hair in front of their eyes, droopy head, all of it. Kinda like the “I put my whole life on the internet, and everyone knows I’m not like this in real life, but I am mysterious because I look like a serial killer.” That kinda thing.

 I was also thinking about being, like, the really put together, “I’m super rich and live in a penthouse in New York City which is why I can afford to dye my hair the platinumest platinum blonde” girl. Also the “I wear matching Louis Vuitton outfits, sometimes Chanel, and I use an Hermes Birkin bag for a backpack. I don’t have a Canada Goose jacket that I wear in public — because I’m very environmentally conscious and my dad has press conferences with PETA — so I opt for a slick Burberry and take the Acela — the MetroNorth is disgusting — to NYC to have dinner at Cecconi’s Dumbo on a Thursday night — you don’t know what that is, but I do because I am rich and from New York City.” You know, the ones that don’t wait until Friday to go out because that’s what all the regular people do, and elitism’s holy day is any Thursday ever? Do you know what I’m talking about? Like the “Thursday nights are a status symbol” folk. If you don’t have to work on Thursday nights and you somehow have time to take a train to NYC to go to Cecconi’s Dumbo, you play an elevated game. That kind of beat.

Another one I ran through my head is, like, the Yale University schoolgirl before Yale University let in schoolgirls, you know? Like the thick high socks, the round Harry Potter glasses, the plaid skirts, the button-downs. Like Yale in the 50s when it was all male. The hot girl in the men’s club, sitting under the stained-glass windows reading Plato at 10 p.m. and shooting the shit with the white humor magazine trust fund boys who are all secretly conservative at 1 a.m. on production nights. That one.

I also thought about being the outdoorsy granola girl, but I went outside once this semester and it was 11 degrees, so I never went back out again.

Another one I briefly considered was the edgy writer chic chick. You know, like the one that gets published in the New York Times at 14 years old and becomes the most feared film critic in America at 21 and wears like a weird 2-inch pump heel as if to say you could never brand me a whore but I will stomp you to the ground? You know those? They sport the New Yorker tote bag and stuff. But I realized that would never work out for me when I got a B on a humor essay that the professor claims “everyone gets an A or A- on since it’s the first one.” I also don’t want to pay the $6 for a membership with the New Yorker. So, that means no tote bag for me. Also, this writer lady is perpetually stressed out which results in her being hard-nosed with everyone. She takes no shit. I, on the other hand, take all the shit. Your dog could pee on my 2-inch pump I’m-not-a-whore shoes, and I’d apologize to you. I am perpetually apologizing. Apparently it really bothered my first-year roommate that I said sorry so much, so she made me pay her one cent for every apology, and by the end of the month, I had paid her $5. We struck this deal on Feb.15.

Anyways, that’s all to say, these three bozo fuckers at SNL stole my personality idea. After I got out of my shower last week, I started my nighttime ritual of watching 600 hours of Saturday Night Live so that I hate myself in the morning, and I found ‘Please Don’t Destroy — New Personalities’ by Ben, Martin and John — please take a wild guess at the racial composition of this group. And they decided to experiment with new personalities on national television — to ensure I couldn’t write a piece about personalities for my college newspaper without getting sued in the circuit court for copyright infringement, fraud and my outstanding warrant for accidentally parking in the handicap spot at Rite Aid — ripped off of my original process that took place in the shower. Like where do you think they got the idea for the guy that lost all his research? That is literally my father all the time. Between the ages of six and 12, I got accused 13 times of stealing his groundbreaking biostatistics research. Between 13 and 18, it was 57 times. Not for ripping off his ideas or anything — he knew I couldn’t do basic algebra — but somehow misplacing the papers that he intentionally placed so high that they were only accessible with a professional construction crane. The raised eyebrows personality? That is every aunt in my extended family ever. And once I turn 40, it will be me too. Instead of doing arranged marriages, in my culture, we do coerced eyebrow tattooings because we’re dramatic and want to outdo each other by looking like clowns at the yearly wedding ceremony where the next set of cousins are marrying each other.

Essentially, if I tried to pick a personality, people would think I’m unoriginal and stealing an SNL sketch idea. So I ended up sticking with my default — no personality. At least that’s what my mom said about me when she started following me on Instagram this year.