[ WP ] Every year on their birthday , everyone has the opportunity to change one thing about themselves , be it physical or otherwise . This year , you were thinking about ditching your tendency to be lazy , but you 've noticed a disturbing trend in people that mess with personalities .

In the early years it was always easy, choosing what to pick. If I wanted to be more popular, I could wish to be prettier, to have fuller hair, or thinner hips. But by 8th grade that was what most of my classmates picked too and we all basically looked like goddamn models anyway. 
 
 Status started to rely on other things, things like charisma and charm. Luckily though by that time I had stopped giving a shit whether I was popular or not and had started to become interested in science. 
 
 So when the form came on my 14th birthday from the government, informing me that I was able to choose a new feature I immediately knew I wanted to be smarter so I could more easily understand all those complicated theories in my latest science text about black holes. 
 
 My mother congratulated me on my first mature choice. She told me that that was how it always used to be and that the program first started as a way to make humans more evolved but had recently degenerated into a modern day never ending beauty contest. 
 
 My best friend Sarah disagreed wholeheartedly. Her boyfriend Eric liked extreme sports and'extreme' friends. So somewhat shy Sarah had decided she was going to ask to be more daring so that they could have more in common. 
 
 I thought it was a dumb choice from the beginning because why in the hell would you waste a choice on something as shallow as that, but who cares, I had thought. 
 
 Sarah was her own person and could pick whatever she wanted. We grew apart soon after that as I had with many friends before. Not because of Sarah though, not because she ditched me for her boyfriend and not because she suddenly spent all of her time sky diving. 
 
 It was because the year after that she had asked for a better sense of humor and our little inside jokes were no longer were funny, they paled in comparison to the witty banter that Sarah could easily start up with all the other people that had asked for similar comedic genius. 
 
 I could have picked to be funny too but at that point I had come to wonder what was the point? Was I picking things because that was what I wanted or just to fit in? I asked to be more logical the next year and it was then that I started noticing the differences, I could n't put my finger on it exactly. 
 
 I heard similar variations of the same joke 4 times in one month the next year. I usually never would have noticed but wishing to be more observant had its perks I guess. After a while you can find the pattern, with a little focus I can tell what personality trait someone chose and what year they picked it. They change the programs you know. So someone who chose to be witty in one year answers a little different than someone who wishes for the same thing the next. But I can still tell. 
 
 It makes it somewhat awkward when I go out with others I can almost feel the beats of the conversation as they flow in that programmed manner. I can guess when someone will pause to make the next thing they say have greater effect. Its supposed to be impressive but to me it just seems hollow. 
 
 When I first figured it out I thought of making experiments and showing the world my findings, that I could uncover this great conspiracy. Imagine my surprise when I got to college only to find out that everyone knew. Ok, well that is an exaggeration, not everyone knew specifically that asking for a better personality would make you a copy of a copy. 
 
 What I mean is no one really cared. If you did n't ask for the random mix of traits that I did, observant, analytical, enhanced memory or little things like pattern recognition, you would never notice. So no one else can tell that Sarah raises her voice the exact same amount of decibels at the end of her punchline as everyone else that chose a better sense of humor in the year 3010. 
 
 Maybe I'm just being overly critical but it's driving me insane.
