Smackdown topic: Wednesday, June 5-

"How do you think other people perceive you?"

How do I think other people perceive me? Wow, there's a dull question.

Why dull, you ask? The thing with me is that in person, in some respects, I consciously try to project an image that isn't the real me. What I mean by that is, I try to come off as sane and normal and innocuous. I mainly try to blend into the scenery, personality-wise.

Visual-wise, I don't blend in because I am too much of a colorful clotheshorse. Not too many people would leave the house to go to work wearing what I did on Monday. Heeled sandals with purple straps and blue swirly soles, a blue and purple flowered skirt, purple shirt, niobium round necklace, flashy purple flowered dangly earrings, and purple glitter flower barettes. Not only would I wear that to work, that outfit pretty much goes anywhere with me. I like dress-up clothes, and I got tired of having no reason or opportunity to wear any, so now I just dress up all the time. I imagine that at this point upon seeing me, men just drool and women think I'm a well-turned-out poodle.

This is quite a change from when I was younger, when I dressed to blend in with the nearest teenage throng or the nearest wall. Back then, being the nerd girl with glasses pretty much equated to having a target painted on my forehead. (Or on the back of my head, where the gum usually landed.) I mainly just tried to disappear in hopes that the bully types wouldn't notice me. They ALWAYS did. I guess at some point I just gave up on trying to blend in physically. Of course, finally getting out of high school and being trapped in classes with bullies helped too.

But the blending in I used to do has pretty much affected how I act around new people to this day. When meeting people or being around a bunch of strangers (where I don't have to talk) or when I'm around my dad's side relatives, I am very, very quiet. I tend to sit in the corner and read and hide. When asked about my life by these people, I try to make it sound as dull as possible. "I do nothing, I just go to work and then come home and sit, that's it." I give the impression of being a nice, normal, good girl who keeps her legs crossed, is a lady and would never dream of doing anything unconventional because she just doesn't have the personality or imagination for it.

I don't want these people (especially my family) to know the Real Me, because then I'd be likely to become a target again. It is imperative that my family doesn't know what I'm really like because most of them would have a big cow about it. They can't handle the truth. About the only way I CAN pass as a normal sane person is to keep my mouth shut. Because if I feel comfortable enough, I'll chat chat chat away, and reveal... that I'm BONKERS! Mad, I tell you, mad!

Obviously I just don't bother trying to pull this off online. Y'all have read this here journal, and anyone who's read it knows I'm insane even if you didn't hear the old name of it. You've seen the weird things that go through my mind and I feel like typing about, and I'll pretty much go on about these things in real life to known people, too. Anyone who's had real in-depth discussion with me has to wonder why I seem to live the life of a soap opera chracter. Once I talk, it's pretty obvious to all that I'm a nice little nutcase. Or so people tell me, anyway. The favorite remark to describe me by many is that "she looks normal, until she opens her mouth..."

In other non-smackdown news... it was a real blast last night, Crisis Central on Jen's phone line. First Denise called because her uncle died and she felt guilty for not having gone to see him before that, but she didn't know he was going to die THAT soon. Plus she has to go to the funeral this weekend and see all of her heinous nagging relatives. So she and I vented about that kind of thing for awhile. Then about a minute after that Dave called (he'd apparently been calling every five minutes for an hour and a half!), all freaked out because Teri opened up her radiator cap when she shouldn't have and had to go to the hospital for facial burns. (As we found out later, she'll be fine. Possible scarring, but not bad.) Suffice it to say I was on the phone all night long and after awhile Hill kept picking up the phone and dropping it, i.e. hint hint, I want the line.

Then Mom sent me a complaining e-mail this morning saying could I please call her if my phone line was going to be busy, because she tried to call all night long and couldn't get through! Hey, she doesn't like call waiting, what else can she expect? Phone lines are there to be taken up.

Dave and I were talking about our weird senses of logic, and I said that my logic was so weird that nobody but me understood it, therefore it was "Mylastnameian Logic." He thought that was great and said that "Hislastnamian" just sounded like gobbledygook. Then said that too bad I'd be switching to a gobbledygook name. "Uh... what?"

Much as I've been dreading this and putting it off, I had to break it to him that I wasn't. (I still can't believe I had to tell him that again.) He seemed to take it pretty well- it's hard to argue with the memorial-to-a-dying-parent logic, I'm sure. I apologized and said that I'd thought about hyphenation, but our names are just both too damn long to do that. He said "Yeah, and it'd take you 45 minutes to write a check." It pretty much blew over.

However, I suspect he was really wanting me to take his, given all of his "Mrs. Mylastname" remarks. Aw crap.

I have perfectly good reasons, both practical and personal, to keep my name. Filling out all that paperwork to change it would be a pain in the ass. It's not so great on the career front either to have no connection between my old byline and other name. Though I have always liked seeing the Rodham Clinton-style bylines that people do, I think that looks nice and impressive. And dammit, our names are just too long for any of that! This is the first time I've dated someone (er, more than three dates, anyway) that had a long last name like me, and it's an adjustment.

Why on earth do I feel GUILTY now for not wanting to have his name as some part of mine (if not my entire name altogether)? It's not like he's trying to make me do it, but now I feel bad for him. I don't like disappointing him, it's something I usually never do. But on the other hand, I feel like I need to keep my own identity instead of losing it. I'm already having issues with the stereotypical wife identity being applied to me up the wazoo, especially the "how others perceive me as one" bit of it. (Just wait until I write the followup entry to this after marriage...)

I don't know if this had anything to do with it, but that night I had a dream where his parents sat me down and said that they wanted to like me, but I had to shape up in my behavior first, and stop doing stuff like taking out a book during his grandma's slide shows. Oh yeah, and that shirt his grandma loaned me? They'd like it back. I'm all "Oh, I brought it along with me," and went into my bag to get it... only it wasn't there.

Geez, my dreams are so damn transparent and lame. Dave has wild dreams about me, and I come up with crap like this. Ugh.

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