I just read a blog entry someone posted about two people I know really well. It's just so interesting to read how a stranger might interpret the behavior of people that you know. It got me thinking: How do people judge me? Or, really, how do I judge other people based solely upon really basic information?...This is obviously a really large topic to tackle, but I really think that us New Yorkers are far more guilty of being judgmental than we'd like to believe.

Just the other day, Katie and I stopped into a sports bar on the Upper West Side to watch the NCAA Woman's Basketball Championship. It was filled with dudes in suits and I immediately wrote them all off as a) I-bankers and b) not my type. There was a young(ish) man sitting next to us at the bar, also wearing a suit, and I wrote him off as both a) and b) as well. As it turned out, he was a urologist. He was just wearing a suit because he had a conference that day. He was very cute and nice and I, in fact, ended up giving him my card (pimped out by Katie). On any given day, I could be wearing any number of different types of outfits depending on where I was going-- do I want people making snap judgments on me based on that? There were years when I had bright red dyed hair. I have had black hair. At the moment my hair is its natural color. I have had my nose ring in and out depending on the year. Sometimes you can see the tattoo on my back, sometimes it's covered. Sometimes I wear thrift clothes, sometimes stuff straight out of the Gap.

But it's not just looks, it's attitude and behavior as well. Sometimes I'm tired and cranky, sometimes I'm peppy and hyper. God knows what strangers have thought of me during any of these times. In sixth grade, a good friend of mine revealed that she had thought I was a snob on the first day of school because I didn't talk to anyone. I was flabbergasted. On the first day of school I was so nervous about not knowing anyone that I didn't speak to anyone. I didn't think I was better than everyone else, I was afraid of them. Shy can be misconstrued as standoffish, tired can be misconstrued as sad, and hyper can be misconstrued as on coke. Obviously, there's no way to avoid judgments from happening, but it's weird to remove yourself from your own vision of who you are and think about how others might perceive you. I guess, in the long run, it doesn't really matter what strangers think as long as you have enough friends and family in your life that know who you really are and like you for it.