One day during my high school senior English class, my classmates and I had been assigned to groups for some kind of class project. I was paired with one of my good friends and a couple of acquaintances (I went to a rather small school, so none of my classmates were strangers). I was constantly joking around, as I am wont to do. It's a carefully developed defense mechanism, a way of deflecting attention away from my insecurities and uncertainties, of which, I admit, I have many.
As we had finished the project, one of my group members, a girl I'll call Ellie, turned to me and said, "You know, before this project, I didn't think you had a personality."
