College is a time in which you learn a lot about yourself by the reaction of the people you deal with on a day-to-day basis. It's a time when others are trying to figure out whether or not they want to be friends with you. Some people figure that out pretty early. Other take a little longer so they can gather information and not judge.
I used to think of myself as an open book as far as other people were concerned. I figured I talked enough to give people a good indication of the type of person I was. Actually, it turns out I didn't really talk about myself very much and kept quiet most of the time. This made everyone just wonder about what was going on in my head.
I found out later people made all kinds of assumptions based not on what I said, but my appearance. I had very long hair and normally only wore T-shirts and blue jeans. If I came up as a topic of discussion when I wasn't around, the other students would come up with theories about me. Some thought I smoked pot, drank beer or was a drug addict. Some thought I was really poor, and that's why I only wore T-shirts and blue jeans. I found this an odd observation, because the students making it also only wore T-shirts and blue jeans.
The funny thing is that it wasn't until the middle of the Spring 1983 semester that anyone knew that I had a car. I was in the Theatre lobby when one of the students said she needed to go into town and wished she knew someone who had a car. I told her I had a car. "You have a car?" Since everything on campus was within a half mile of my dorm room, I really didn't need it to get to classes. But I had to walk back to the dorm to get my car to give her a ride. (And I remember something odd that happened when we started to leave. At the stop light next to the Theatre, a semi screeched on its brakes and it took about 15 seconds to come to a complete stop. It was really noisy. We went on our way to town. When we came back to the Theatre about an hour later, that truck was still there at the stop light. Apparently, it had done some major damage to its tire tread when it came to that sudden stop. I didn't stick around to see how they resolved that situation.)
Because I didn't have a girlfriend, people also assumed I was gay. I should point out, however, that it was only the straight people who thought I was gay. I never had any of the real gay people on campus pester me while I was in college. Even my friend Kird asked me if I was gay. The next day, I landed my first college date (Loz, coming up soon). I told him about it and he still thought I was somewhat gay. The funny thing is that Kird would often kind of roughhouse with the other guys, including me. Chud had been on the receiving end of this treatment as well and he told me he thought Kird was gay. I told him I didn't think that was the case. (Chud later denied ever having said that, but I remember it clearly.)
I found that this air of mystery has surrounded me my entire life. Even in my most recent position at work, my supervisor had to go and ask a fellow employee I was "pals" with about me. It's amusing because no one ever comes right up and asks me about myself. I remember another job in which my supervisor was surprised to find out I was married. (To be fair, medication I had been taking caused me to gain some weight, including in my fingers. I had to stop wearing my wedding ring for awhile. There's a photo of me on Facebook with me holding my left hand in front of my face and smiling. That was the day I was able to wear the ring again.)
I have to admit that it's fun to find out what people think of you, especially when they are so wrong that they realize their mistake and apologize. I'm also glad that I've been able to maintain a shroud of secrecy about myself. That's the reason I don't use my real name for this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment