During the economic recession, I started a small business selling plants and trees out of my parents' back yard.
One day, towards the end of summer, a customer came from across town to look at my store.
She wore long, thick, blonde hair and a sweeping flowered dress, and as she walked around the plants, she kept calling them all by their Latin names.
I thought that was a little pretentious, but I was polite and tried to be helpful.
She kept looking at me like we had some kind of connection I was supposed to understand.
I didn't.
Finally she just came out and said it:
"I'm a Wiccan high priestess, so..."
"Oh," I said, and nodded.
She looked at me expectantly, as if she was waiting for me to say, "Oh, I'm a witch too!!!"
I'm not. I had a "friend" who became a warlock and put a hex on me, which was literally the worst experience of my life, and also had some "neighbors" who stole our chickens and sacrificed them in the nearby woods. So yeah, I don't see the practice of magic as all fun and games and Harry Potter like most people.
She left, a little disappointed.
Why did she think I was a witch? I wondered. Then I looked at my clothes.
I was wearing a black skirt and an orange T-shirt with black butterflies on it, because I was kind of into lepidopterology at the time. It was one of those first cool days at summer's end, so I had pulled on some black fingerless gloves as a half-measure instead of starting to switch my wardrobe to autumn.
So basically: Halloween colors with a possible hint of naturalist goth?
Fast forward a few years. I was living on the island of Malta in the tourist-town of St. Julian's, and one day after work I wandered into a shop that sold hippie/rasta kind of stuff.
As I strolled through the aisles, I was just coming to the conclusion that there wasn't really anything I wanted to buy, when one of the shop girls asked if she could help me.
I said no thank you and kept on looking, because I didn't want to be rude and walk out of the shop just at that moment.
But I noticed she kept hovering around and looking at me eagerly, so I stopped and looked back at her, because she seemed like she wanted to say something.
"We have a meditation class later," she told me, her eyes shining.
"Oh," I said.
Her eyes were almost popping out, as if she was waiting for me to run into her arms and exclaim, "There is nothing I'd rather do this evening!!!"
Instead I was wondering, Why does she think I'd be interested in that? I've always been suspicious of mysticism being an excuse for not explaining beliefs that are illogical.
Then I looked down at my clothes.
I was wearing a thigh-length tan cotton shirt with the same color embroidery around the neck, sent to me as a gift by a friend who started a sewing school for poor women in India. My khaki-brown skinny pants made the whole outfit monochrome. Also I was freaky-skinny from Lyme disease, which sometimes made people think I was a vegetarian.
So basically: Some kind of salwar-kameez-wearing ascetic sannyasin?
I didn't go to the meditation class.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So kids, the moral of the story is:
Always be yourself and don't let anyone put you in a box because of your style... and you just might end up disappointing a lot of people who thought they just found their new best friend.