Personalities

Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/January 27, 1910

If I had a dozen daughters, do you know what I would do with them? 

Fine them ten cents every time any one of them began to talk personalities and nothing but personalities. 

Me, mine; you, yours; she, hers; he, his—I’m getting to hate the very words. 

Men can talk five minutes at a time without dragging in a personality. I wonder why the average woman can’t? 

I heard two young fellows talking for half an hour the other day. They discussed a boxing match, a polo game, Peary and Cook, Stevenson’s “Wreckers,” the difference between American football and the English game and a dozen other absolutely impersonal things.

Then they went out somewhere, and their two sisters came into the same room, and for one solid hour the air was heavy with what she said and how he looks and whether she had a good nose and whether he really danced well or not—personalities, personalities, personalities. The room was so suffocated with little ideas about little people that I kept wanting to open the window and let in a regular winter blizzard, so we’d all get a chance to breathe. 

Now, both of those girls are just as bright as their bright brothers. 

They’ve seen as much of the world, are as well educated and at heart just as kindly, yet you couldn’t interest them in anything that didn’t happen to someone they know, not if you pulled down the eternal heavens to do it. I wonder why? 

I’m going to tie a bell to the tea table in my living room, and every time my little girl begins to tell what she said or how she looked I’m going to ring that bell and make her pay a forfeit.

I don’t want her to grow up a little-minded personality monger if I can help it.

I want her to grow up into a woman that her husband can talk to five minutes without having to weigh every word for fear she’s going to make a personal application of every syllable he says. 

Why, Tom, I never do that.

Oh, Joe, why, who did you ever know that talked that way? Where did the woman live, do you suppose?

 How many times have you heard a woman spoil the point of a good story by her eternal personalities and personal questions? 

Come on, girls; let’s talk about the weather or the horse show or the way the Fiji islanders prefer their cooking—anything to get away from the eternal he, she, you and I.