You Get Me...You Really Really Get Me.

Maybe you are comfortable with who you are, secure in your “You-ness” and confident in how you are perceived by others. Me. Well, I am and I’m not. I am a complex mess of insecure and overconfident, but that’s more than a blog post, that’s a whole book of exploring essays and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy. But this weekend two things happened that made me realize that sometimes people get me. Really get me.

One was a conversation I had on Friday night. It was a brief, in passing conversation. With someone who, when I met him this summer, nicknamed me Legally Brunette. I am ditzy. This I know. I have never pretended to be anything else. But I am also smart. And sometimes I don’t know which side of me people see. I assumed calling me Legally Brunette was a nod to my ditziness. Which didn’t bother me. I myself like to mock my ditziness. But on Friday night (actually it was probably more like Saturday morning because I’m guessing it was close to 1AM) the aforementioned friend said something to the effect of “Sometimes I feel like I need to be prepared to have a conversation with you.”

I asked, all insecure and freaked out, “What the hell does that mean?”

And he responded, “Why do you think you are Legally Brunette?”

I assumed it was my ditziness. He then explained (and I am paraphrasing because this was late into Friday early into Saturday after many a vodka) that like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde people probably underestimate me not realizing that I am actually surprisingly smart.

It took awhile for my late night pickled brain to process words and thoughts and I wasn’t feeling so smart swimming through my inebriation but I took away a whole new appreciation for being called Legally Brunette.

The other surprising moment came in the form of a gift. It started on Tuesday when I was out in the netherworld known as The Suburbs. A friend and I were weaving our way up and down the aisles of a Home Goods when we across a wooden box that was a replica of a typewriter.

I said “When I get a job, (I start many sentences with this. I have already alloted my first several paychecks to shopping sprees at Zara, a dresser, plane tickets- both domestic and international, shoes, a decorator, various outings around Chicago, dubious investments in jewelry. All and all anything from the practical to the ridiculous. It’s not quite as insane as my If-I-won-the-lottery list, but the When-I-get-a-paycheck list is growing) I want to find an antique typewriter.”

Many of my fellow SAIC writing program friends had one, my parents have one. I want one. Not to use. To look at and imagine what if I was Hemingway or Capote clacking away brilliant things on a typewriter. My friend made a face and I assumed it was a there she goes again that weird writer girl look.

Then Saturday afternoon she showed up at my door with a typewriter. An antique typewriter. It had belonged to her neighbor's grandfather. The neighbor used in it college to type all her papers. Apparently my friend had already been planning on giving it to me as a belated birthday gift.

She gets me. Really gets me.