What misperceptions do people have about you?

I think there are few things in life more frustrating than when people - especially people you actually care about - are completely off base in certain ways that they perceive you. This is, of course, the source of 99.9 percent of teen angst, but I'm not sure it goes away with adulthood. We just handle it better.

My list:

(1) My parents think I only care about sports and nothing else. A couple Christmases ago, I asked my mom for Bob Woodward's latest book. She called my wife to make sure that's what I really wanted, because, "It's not about sports."

(2) Most of my friends from my college and high school years think I'm a disheveled, disorganized slob. That may have been true at some point, and probably was, but now I've overcompensated and become probably the most organized, meticulous person I know. This fall, I went to a football game with some of my old college friends. I made the mistake of forgetting to put the cooler in the car. That led to a full afternoon of heckling about how it was, "Classic Dick!" I also remember that they knew I had to attend some formal event where I had to dress up, and spent a full afternoon shooting emails around with "advice" on how to dress (Examples: "Make sure you tuck your shirt in," "Don't wear a baseball cap with a suit.")

Others?

 

My mom thinks I'm a part of the team that I cover and continually asks me, "how are you guys doing? Who do you play this week?" It frustrates me to no end, no matter how many times I tell her I just cover the team, and that's I'm not part of the team.

 

Every Christmas get together with my wife's family for the past 11 years . . . her uncle asks me how many IU games I am going to cover this season. And for the 11th year in a row, I explain that I am a sports designer, not a sports reporter. I think next year I am going to tell him that IU is going to drop the basketball program because of title nine, so I'm not covering any games. I'm interested to see his response.

 

People think I'm stuck up. Instead I'm just uninteresting and lack conversation skills.

Also, people think my life revolves around sports. Only half true.

 

The biggest misconception people have about me is that I am not a psychopathic killing machine. Wait, what?

 

People -- including my wife -- think that just because I work at a newspaper, I am about to be unemployed any day.

 

My wife and I both work in sports media. People seem to think our dinner conversations are about what's wrong with the Bears, when in reality we virtually never talk about sports other than whatever portion of it relates to the usual "how was your day" stuff.

I also second the frustration of people thinking all you care about is sports just because you work in sports. It is possible to be into discussing music, Supreme Court decisions, and travel while also having interest in whether Oregon's going to score 60 every game. Do people think that all insurance agents care about is insurance? Very annoying.

 

Well, all you dumb shits around here think I'm just an old grump.
That is not ture, so fuck all of you. ;D

 

That I want to talk sports with them.

 

People think I'm smert.

 

Back in college, a lot of people thought I was a lesbian. Yet I covered men's sports. :

Also, people don't seem to understand that sports is my job. So talking sports is, basically, talking about work. I doubt they want to talk about work all the time.

Oh, and I'm not very good at sports trivia... except the Olympics.

 

I would be curious what percentage of women sports writers have had people assume they're lesbians at some point in their careers. Sadly, it's probably pretty high.