Shortly after we moved to our current neighborhood, one of our new neighbors went around telling our other new neighbors that I’m Jewish.
Except I’m not, and I’m not sure which confuses me more: that he decided I was, or that he thought this was important enough to go around and tell other people about 
The nun at the church I attended as a teenager said I’d make a good nun. Nothing could be more further from the truth.
I’ve also been mistaken for a lesbian. My best friend and I are both straight, but we are both very physically affectionate, so maybe that’s where the misunderstanding came from.
All I can think of is this one girl in either fifth grade who labeled me as a bully. She claimed I was mean to her, but the thing is, we never interacted at all. And I was about as far from a bully as you could be. I alternated between being really shy and really friendly.
The girl later left the school, and I assume I never heard from here again, but I’m not sure, since I can’t even remember what she looks like. I can only think she was trying to get me to notice her, and failed.
This might be handy for playing that “if I look like I know where I’m going, the guard won’t notice me” trick you often see on TV.
Oh gosh. Let me try to remember. In hindsight, it was probably as much about me as it was about him. I mean, no question, he was a dick, but maybe he didn’t rise quite to the level of dickery as I thought he did.
He would call students names (“wrong again, bat breath!”) and otherwise deride them. He was also one of those teachers who had particular rules. You couldn’t wear a hat in class. The assignments had to be done in a very particular way, and if you messed up some technicality he would mark you down a full letter grade. I was also probably slightly annoyed that it was a required class, in a subject I didn’t like, and yet for some reason I did very well in it.
I was also at the time reading John Holt books, which were sort of about making education a joyous thing, and valuing the student. Whereas it was clear that for this teacher this was just a job, and also that he got more pleasure out of being an authority figure than he did out of helping students learn.
In any case, on the last day of class, I think perhaps after he had insulted another student, I stood up, my face red, and told him basically that he was the epitome of everything that is wrong in the educational system. He and my classmates all had wide eyes and open mouths! But he also looked somewhat amused that I had stood up to him. And I didn’t get in trouble (maybe because it was the last day of classes?)
In English class at that time, we had an assignment to write a bit in the style of the Canterbury Tales, and I wrote mine about him:
And on this pilgrimage to rodent’s realm
There was a Cherokee, and at the helm
Was a high school teacher; and although
Indeed he had a PhD to show
To say he taught would be a hearty jest
For in the art he was surely not blessed;
His love was penguins, his shape like a squash,
And despite fifty cycles through the wash,
His checkered shirt blinded even the sun;
His hobby was torture, beating his fun;
Excellent was he at pounding out truth,
But as always, he, so very uncouth,
Drove it not in, but crippled it leth’lly
So much so that his pupils’ve been chiefly) Tx
Imprisoned as though in tight, locked boxes
By his hypocritical paradoxes;
Flames he will earn for all he has shamed,
And while he always to his students claimed
That he surpasses God and even Death
They know that he is
“Wrong Again, Bat Breath!”
My English teacher wasn’t too happy about that. 
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I think you’d make an excellent lesbian nun.
What, I’m wrong?
TMI, Really Not All That Bright!
Better to be called stuck-up than sociopath. To be fair though, I don’t think my friend really understood the meaning of sociopath and just threw the first insult that she could think of that vaguely fits her view of me.
Lately however, every other person seems to think I’m a vegetarian. It’s amusing since I love all sorts of horrible meat products, but at parties some kind person will usually let me know where the vegetarian patties are located.
Sophomore year in college, I was invited by a sister to her golf club. One of the ‘power people’ there said I was just a big kid, that I never grew up and that I never would grow up.
…ya know, I can’t exactly say he was wrong though.
Well, when you’re 75 and playing with the grandkids and having fun while they’re grumping about their lumbago, you’ll have your revenge.
You were a college sophomore? You acted like a big kid who’d never grow up? What on earth else did that golfing puffer fish expect?
Whoa there! What Sunspace said.
Let’s dial it back a bit, OK?
No warning issued.
For anyone who knows how stunningly beautiful Hazel is, such surprisingly graphic jokiness is easily understandable.
And besides, I think RNATB was just trying real hard to prove how not gay he is, besides the fact that he`s like married and everything 
Personally, I was told at a very young age how good I was with people, how I made everyone happy around me, etc. At the time I was super-shy, anxious, and while generally friendly I was certainly no pro at the people game. But, now ten years later and after many learning experiences I consider myself to be pretty personable IIDSSM.
“You look like you’d make a helluva SEAL!” — Navy recruiter circa 1985.
Uh, yeah. I’m 118 pounds of slump-shouldered nerd scrawn. And that ASVAB on your desk states that I would be best employed as either a bayonet dummy or a hostage. But thank you! :rolleyes:
Two more examples!
I was semi dating a guy, and he was let’s say spiritual, and in a moment of passion he made the prediction/blessing? that “you will be a star” (as in successful, not as in famous). Which I found interesting coming from someone who is a musician on tour.
Also, I was at a convention for which Tony Todd was a guest. I don’t remember what question I asked him, but he prefaced his answer by asking me if I was a filmmaker. I said no, and he said I “looked like a filmmaker”…
I have to say, I feel lucky that the examples I can think of are all either generally positive, or at least empowering (hey I don’t mind putting a positive spin on “rebel” since it expanded my previously by the numbers personality).
I also feel somewhat blessed in that I manage to min/max this sort of thing. While I usually manage to use other’s expansive ideas about me to expand my own self-perception, at the same time I manage to circumvent the few times (usually by familial authority figures) I’m given a negative expectation.
I’ve been called a professional Elliot Gould impersonator by some fool taking the same bus as me. As in hired by a NYC agency to impersonate Elliot Gould for the sake of some Andy Kaufman-style prank. I don’t look anything like Elliot Gould, clearly, since I was also called “fatboy” by some fool on the same line, which ticked me off since I’m not all that fat. Also “hipster” in some review of a solo piano set I did.
An ex-girlfriend I was shacked up with for a few months, after we shared a joint in bed, asked me, point blank, “Are you schizophrenic?” Always thought that was an odd thing to say. Kind of hurt my feelings, actually.