multiples with scruples

I had a rare conversation with someone yesterday. An older gentleman with a roaring sense of humor. There was a light buzz all around him and a keen energetic eye that definitely caught my affection.  Although I don't know this gentleman, he reminded me about a lot of 'stuff.'

He was describing with authority his 5 personalities and his new 6th personality which would lead him back to the real him. He said as the middle child he developed personality number 2 as a mechanism to stand out. What did that mean?

Be funny.
Tell stories.
Exaggerate.

Props for the pic

Now out of his more formative years he's testing out his quiet, serious (real) self on a new set of neighbors. Things were going really well until he invited them to a party where his old friends would be attending and know and treat him as personality 2. Funny, story telling guy.

Well, his wife asked him why he would do such a thing if he wanted to continue this new thread. He said he had no idea. Now they'd be rousing him from his quietude and hassling him about his exaggerated stories, thus blowing his 'cover.'

While the content of his story was fascinating and was told with an air of affluence that hinted that he was kidding, I still got that sense that he really wasn't. Kidding, that is. Afterwards, I debriefed with a friend who knows him far better than I who tried to convince me that he was teasing. "He's a born salesman!" he said. But still, I'm not buying it. I know what I heard behind the face that told it, or maybe I do...

Fine.

Well, what I do know, I can say from experience. I am NOT a middle child, but I did develop a certain personality to get me through the less versatile parts of life. At heart I am extremely serious about this whole life business. If you can't tell by my blog it's ALWAYS on my mind. What am I doing here, how am I growing, am I contributing to life in meaningful ways. Not to say that these things aren't fun, because they are! But on the same tack it's extremely important to me to feel that life has meaning, even if it's just by way of attributing meaning to it, whether it's "real" or "imagined."

Still there's always the wonder and there's usually the folk who prefer the funny, dramatic persona from me. I give it away because it shines back and my ego will gladly bask in it. But it lacks that real sense of depth you get from friends who know the darker shadowy self that wonders and notices the slightest measures of 'coincidence' and 'reflection' of life.

To complicate things further, the funny drama queen. She is real. And is an integral part of self, but somehow these two don't always get a long. She's always making light of the serious stories I'm telling or validating herself by others reactions to them.

Whatever.

I guess I know nothing other than they operate on such different planes it seems impossible to neutralize their discrepancies. And this older gentleman, maybe he's really onto something by testing it out on new people to be able to more 'organically' reveal his other side.

And that's all I have to say right now. I'm all ears...