Strangers and Anonymity

Hey everybody :)

Today I wanted to write about the anonyimty we have from strangers and the same anonymity we hvae to them.

Often, when I am travelling alone, I like to pretend that I'm someone else. Not in a manic-episode I-think-I-am-the-leader-of-the-world sort of a way. But in a it'd-be-fun-to-try-out-being-this-person way. I frequently wonder if other people do the same thing.

One day, a long time ago I was getting onto a train to New York City all the way from Toledo OH. Thats a 14 hour journey, changing at Pittsburgh. As a foreign exchange student at the time, I had gotten increasingly exasperated by being asked every single day "Oh my god! Are you from england?" Which was flattering at first to have so many people interested in talking to me, but soon became extremely tiresome. So when I got onto this train, I decided to become someone else. When I got upstairs (yes, upstairs. Weirdly, American trains have to decks...!) and found myself a seat, the woman sat beside me immediately started engaging me in conversation. This is something I LOVE about American people, they are so much more friendly to strangers than British people seem to be. Anyway, tired of being "the token brit" I decided I would take a fresh spin on this and decided to put on my Scottish accent. It was fun at first, but then I realised that if I dropped my new persona, it could be potentially very confusing and/or distressing to this poor woman, and I'd be exposed as a fraud. So...I ended up having to pretend to be a Scottish person... for a good 8 hours until I got my transfer in Pittsburgh.

It probably serves me right for lying to this woman, but I viewed it from several angles:

• The lie was doing no harm. She would never know that I wasn't really a Scottish person, or any of the other things I made up about myself. 
• If I had dropped the persona, it'd be potentially very embarassing to have to explain that, really, I was just pretending to be Scottish. 
• It was a good opportunity to practice some form of improvisation. I know I'd be great in one of those undercover shows now! 

I was suprised how much I could say and people would just... believe me! Rest assured, for the second leg of the journey, I decided to be myself. And although I didn't speak to anybody for rest of the train ride, I was quite relieved not to have to.


Has anybody else ever...created themselves a new, temporary persona? Let me know!

Today, this is me:

See you tomorrow

-Rosa

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