Picking a college was not an easy choice to make. I initially wanted to go to school closer to home. My original plan was for Eastern College in Pennsylvania. However, the closest Southern Baptist school to where I lived gave me a scholarship for being a Southern Baptist. Of course, that school was a 12-hour drive away from home. Despite the distance, I ended up at Gardner-Webb University near Charlotte, NC. That's a long way from Morris, CT.
When I first got to the school, I started noticing a trend. People kept calling me Ashley. My name isn't Ashley. As it turns out, people thought that I looked an awful lot like an older student named Ashley. Once I met her, she told me that she sometimes got called Denise. At the time, I wore hats on occassion and I wore glasses. Someone has a picture somewhere of me and Ashley but Ashley is wearing my hat and my glasses.
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I am frequently amazed by how much people mistake the identities of others based on a few physical traits. This happens a lot with my husband and his cousin. They have three main similarities. They are big, they are bald, and they have beards. However, my husband has a blonde beard and it is pretty long. His cousin has a dark brown/red beard and doesn't shave off whatever hair he has remaining.
When I worked at the residential treatment facility for the chemical dependent aged 12-24, there was another counselor named Stacy. At the time I had short, brown hair and she had hair so long that she would braid it in a long braid over her left shoulder. Her hair was also wavy and light brown, almost blonde. Yet Stacy got called Denise and I got called Stacy on a regular basis. It happened at least once a day. One day, Stacy got so frustrated that during lunch one day she said, "We look nothing alike! The only similarity is that we are big and wear glasses but are glasses are even very different!" I believe there might have been an "arg" in there, too.
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This last one is my favorite. One day, as I was walking on the third floor of the hospital I worked at, one of the nurses stopped me as asked if I had a chance yet to see the patient in room 23. Apparently, that patient had been asking about her Medicare paperwork multiple times.
It took me a while but I finally realized who she thought I was. At the time, my hair had been colored a red violet. The woman that I was being mistaken for is about a foot shorter than me, doesn't wear glasses, has black hair, and a sweet demeanor. Oh yeah, and she is a completely different race than me. I am a very pasty Caucasian and she is a Mexican.
The only similarity we have is that we are overweight.
Arg.
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