I guess this is IMHO since it’s sort of a poll. This might be an experience unique to me, but it’s happened twice (that I can think of offhand) to me so I expect that it’s happened to others at least once.
My computer slash keyboard tutor in junior high commented to me that I would be the sort of person who would really enjoy a manual stick shift car (as opposed to automatic). I have no idea where this comment came from, and at the time it seemed to me to be out of character for myself, but it stuck with me throughout my life, and the second car I owned was a stick shift, and I did, indeed quite enjoy it. Although I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to master it, or the impetus to really enjoy it, had that seed not been planted by my tutor.
Also in Junior High, there was one particular substitute who we had more than one time, as is common. One time he subbed for our history class. At the time, I was a fairly studious person, geeky/nerdy/etc and generally not concerned with acting out in anyway. I don’t remember the specific context, but for some reason he deigned to call me “a rebel without a cause” or even perhaps a “rebel without a clue”. This baffled me! I wasn’t a rule breaker! I looked down on bullies and other slackers! Regardless, this also planted a strong seed inside of me - while my inclination was still to work within reason and rules, I also started seriously considering the possibility that I wasn’t entirely within the realm of convention and rules. It didn’t manifest entirely until Senior year of high school, but manifest it did! In ways sexual and political and philosophical. Where previously I would never have considered such a thing, I cut the occasional class (usually gym) to work on the school paper, and I stood up in Economics class and called out a teacher for his misbehavior.
Has anyone else had the experience of having a particular view of oneself until someone else unexpectedly called some aspect into question, after which you started to question that particular aspect of oneself? Particularly for the positive, or at least, for growth?
My friend and I decided to do a craft project where we took small-ish boxes, filled them with newspaper and covered them with contact paper to make building blocks for her son and my niece.
It just so happened that I keep a pile of empty boxes in my basement. I get a lot of mail-order stuff and keep the boxes around. Since I have a huuuuge empty basement, it’s no big deal for me to store these boxes and I end up re-using them to send stuff in the mail. People also use my boxes when they move. This very friend had used a lot of my boxes when she moved.
Anyway, I was able to supply about 40 small boxes for this project and it worked out well.
But, while we were working, my friend said I was a hoarder. Because I kept all those boxes.
My 1000sq. ft. house is extremely tidy and junk free, and her 2000sq. ft. house is bulging with DVDs, books, games, action figures and Tupperware…but because I keep a 4’x4’ stack of empty boxes in my basement, I’m the hoarder.
It really touched a nerve. I still keep my boxes but now I tend to throw every other one away when I get them. Heh.
My AP US History teacher decided to ask us all about our religious preferences. I indicated that I considered myself a non-denominational Christian. He said I was a “fundamentalist.” Er…no. Do I have some strong religious beliefs? Of course. Am I going to protest and scream at you? No. I didn’t really know what the word meant.
While student teaching, a student told me, “You people just don’t get it.” I was taken aback, but I cautiously asked, “What do you mean by ‘you people’?” He replied, “You stupid white people.” FTR, the student in question was of Portuguese descent who considered himself among the maligned Hispanic population (not sure if the Portuguese are considered Hispanic, exactly) in the school. He also gave a classmate a hard time because one boy had a Greek name, but his mother was Laotian. sigh I had never been call “white” derisively before–I usually self-identify as Finnish-American.
I started college as a computer science major and came out with an English degree. Two weeks into my first semester as an English major, my Great Books of Antiquity professor asked me, “Are you going to teach high school or middle school?” I insisted that I was just going to be a writer. She laughed. I’m now a high school teacher.
I was taking a yoga class, and enjoying it, though it was difficult. One day as I was leaving, one of the instructors mentioned that I would “make a great yoga teacher”.
“Um, thanks?” :: puzzled look ::
The idea was so far from my mind that it might as well have been on a different planet.
Someone who used to be a friend at work recently accused me of being self absorbed and too wrapped up in my own little world to give a damn about anyone else. While I think I know what triggered it, and it’s a long story*, it still came out of nowhere and hurt like hell. I don’t think I’m like that at all, but when she started adding that everyone else at work hates me and she was always defending me but not anymore, well, I guess I have to wonder a little. Am I doing something wrong and being perceived as a cold uncaring bitch, or was she adding that comment to hurt me? I don’t have many friends, so maybe I am lousy at this interpersonal thing.
*Attempt at a short version: had some unpleasantness about a year ago when I found her and her hairdresser friend to be pushing me into wedding-hair decisions I didn’t actually like. I’m easily cowed by loud and opinionated people so I said I loved it and regretted it after I left. She was spectacularly offended and she cooled off a lot towards me and started mumbling “bridezilla” comments. At that point I felt uncomfortable, and she and I transitioned to at-work-only-friends instead of hanging-out friends. Meanwhile, her husband was deployed to Afghanistan and I was as supportive as I could be at work, asking about him, and her kids, and how they were doing, and only now a year later does she tell me that she’s mad I never asked her out for coffee or called to check on her during her year of need. While I thought she didn’t want me in her personal life. Oh, and there’s the matter of the thank-you card I sent her after the bridal shower she helped organize for me, which she says she never got. Again, waited almost a year to say anything. It’s not a salvageable situation at this point, even though I tried to talk to her and take the blame for totally misreading her cues and thinking incorrectly that she wanted me more distant.
So, who knows. It’s got me really down and interpreting any odd comment or delayed email response as proof that she’s right and everyone hates me. And then the other half of me wonders how much of other people’s opinions of me are colored by all the stuff she’s been saying about me behind my back.
Apparently for a few years while I was away at college my own parents thought I was gay. I was completely unaware of this until I saw their reaction the first time I brought a girlfriend home. That was…weird, to say the least.
I like purple. I look good in it, in some shades. Not pastel lavender, for example. But if I see a sweater I like that comes in green, orange, and a shade of purple that I happen to like, I’ll buy the purple. This has turned me into the “purple lady.” Every damn gift I get is purple. People show me things “Look, Sigmagirl, purple! purple!” like they’re holding a treat out to a dog. “Biscuit! Biscuit!” Yes, I can see it’s purple. “I got this for you! It’s purple so I thought of you! I can see you’re wearing your purple today!”
If I wear a pink sweater I get the third degree. I can’t win. I’m fucked.
A classmate once called me high-maintenance; I can’t even remember the context but I feel like I have started making efforts to specifically not be high-maintenance and be comfortable whatever my surroundings. In fact, I was young enough that I think he may have not even known what that meant and have just been searching for a good-sounding insult, but it’s still affected me in this way.
But when I was in grade school, and pretty unpopular, one girl accused me of being stuck up. I guess that shy can come off as stand-offish.
Just a few weeks ago some women at work called me intimidating. They were scared to talk to me because they thought I’d rip their heads off and freak out on them. That’s about as opposite of me as can be. I’m often adrift in my own little world. I guess that looks intimidating and hostile to some people.
I’ve had that intimidating comment at work too. I don’t suffer fools and I don’t bother with playing the office politics games, so I guess that can make me intimidating.
I was talking to a coworker who I had previously helped with spelling of random words as she text and she told me that in the bathroom another coworker said that I acted like “I was too good to work at the store.”
Huh?!
I had never thought that before. Yes, I greatly dislike the job at times, but I carry it out with the same professionalism that I have in my past jobs because I would like to keep it.
The first coworker came to my rescue then and told the other cashier “That’s because she IS too good for this place!” It made me happy to hear that from a person I barely knew at the time but still, I wonder who the second coworker was…She never told me. It was all just something that came out of left field to me.
The same thing happened to me. I have graduate and undergraduate and graduate degrees in English but never wanted to teach, but of course that’s what everyone expected me to do. When asked which level I wanted to teach, I’d always say I was going to be an editor and a writer, and I did both for years. In the last 15 or so years, though, I’ve been teaching in colleges, first as an adjunct and now as a full-time Composition instructor, so I guess they were right in the end (although I still write).
I have blonde hair and big boobs, so I’ve been unfairly labeled for a looong time as stupid by people who don’t know me. The worst incident occurred when I was at a party and didn’t laugh at a fairly misogynistic joke my then husband told. Another guy at the party said, “What’s wrong with you? You didn’t laugh, and that was a really funny joke! Read a book!”
I calmly told him that not only have I read literally thousands of books, but that I’d both written and edited dozens of them, and that I didn’t laugh at the joke because it wasn’t funny. And it wasn’t. Jerk.
I’ve been told both of those things, too. I’m no longer shy, but I’m not overly aggressive, either, but I’ve been told more than once that I’m intimidating.
I really wish I knew exactly how people perceived me, but I guess that’s impossible.
In my case I decided not to let it lie. I asked one of the women if she could explain more. She said she’d be happy to. We’re having lunch at some unspecified date in the near future.
I apparently have the same issue with black. I like wearing black, and I wear it more than most people do, I think I look good in it; hell, everyone looks good in black. But it isn’t my favorite color (I don’t look good in my favorite color) and I often wear other colors I look good in, like blue or white. And yet, every single time I wear something other than all black, even when I haven’t worn all black all week, I get bizarre looks and questions about if I’m feeling okay or if its laundry day or something. It’s not a fashion statement or me trying to present some kind of message, I just wear what I think I look good in and find comfortable.
Similarly, I like metal, I listen to a lot of it, but I also listen to a lot of other stuff. In fact, the majority of the stuff I listen to isn’t very heavy at all, and yet, whenever I listen to music and it isn’t metal, I get the same sorts of responses. “Dude, where’s the crazy death metal?” Umm… I’m listening to something else right now. I understand that metal isn’t mainstream, and I listen to much more of it than most people do, but I really see myself as much more into music in general or as a musician than just that metal guy. Even moreso, it seems contradictory to me because, in that context, they seem to expect me to be an aggressive satan worshipper, and yet I’m straightforward about my beliefs when it’s relevant and I tend to be quiet, so somehow liking metal and the associated stereotypes supercedes everything else.
I bought a new car a few months ago, an Acura, and apparently it threw a lot of people for a loop because I’m apparently not the type of person to buy a luxury car. People apparently expected me to get an SUV or a muscle car… no, I hate those types of vehicles, I’d never drive one. In fact, I can’t even begin to figure out why people got the impression that I did, especially since the car I drove before was just an old cheap sedan. Maybe someone here knows… what makes a guy an “SUV or muscle car” guy? Any ideas I have about the stereotypes associated with those types of cars seems pretty much antithetical to who I am.
Another black wearer here. I wear black because it’s slimming and I tend to spill things on myself but a co-worker asked me if I was a Satanist because I wore black “all the time.”
In the opposite vein, I was at university studying political science with the intent of going to law school. My older brother - out of the blue - says “You’ll never be a lawyer.” I graduated with my degree but, damn, if he wasn’t right.