Man, being Sam is great!!! I got a potential job offer by doing nothing other than sitting in a Firestone auto center, waiting for my car to get oil changed, and being Sam!! At first, I was annoyed. I thought, come on, I have a laptop in front of me, I'm typing furiously, does that look or sound like an invitation for conversation with a random stranger??

Guess it was good that he was persistent, because somewhere between trying to flag an email for followup and trying to file all of the ones I've already followed up on, I decided this would be a perfect chance for me to try on Sam. I answered his questions, I smiled, I eventually even got around to asking him questions and (I think) appeared to be witty. So, this guy's "currently unemployed," is helping out his friend's business, and figured he could make a little money on the side. "Hmm, so you get paid to help out by going to the auto store with him??" Sam asked. Not sure if he was amused, but I sure was!!

So blah blah blah, the guy's telling me that when I first sat down, he thought I was a sales rep for some fashion apparel company... I'm quite certain (I think) that was a line. Come on!! I was dressed in jeans, an old navy shirt, slippers, with my glasses. Albeit, the glasses were brand new and I was quite proud to have picked them out all on my own, but surely, I was not a "fashion sales rep!!" Is that the type of stuff that comes out of people's mouths nowadays??

I've been so busy being myself, completely accepting of my "no non-related friends" rule that it's been a LONG LONG time since I've said more than 5 sentences to any strangers. The world's crazy out there today!! You never know if the next person who crosses your path is going to be some psychopath, so I figured, much like a job interview where people come with references, so should the "making new friends" process be. If I don't know someone who knows you or is willing to admit that they know you?? I assume it's safer not to know you :) But I don't even know if that's a good rule!!

My worst "1 degree of seperation acquaintance" was at the Raleigh airport. I was sitting there, waiting to fly out of NC, and (un)fortunately sat next to a chatterbox of a guy. He was pretty young, looked to be in his mid-twenties, pretty good looking in that Southern boy charm kind of way. Maybe it was his Southern drawl, or maybe it was because I wasn't planning on ever returning to North Carolina. For whatever reason, I decided some amusement for the next hour while I waited for the flight to get in wouldn't be such a bad idea afterall. He did most of the talking (as expected). Fifteen minutes into the conversation, it turns out that he's an MBA classmate of a very close friend of mine at Duke's Fuqua School (BTW, BOO those blue devils!!!). All of a sudden my impression of him changed. It was as if someone dropped his belated credentials on my desk after he had already sad down for the interview. He had established instant credibility and his dialogue become our conversation.

Looking back today, I marvel at that newly defined bond because he was able to stretch it into a 3 hour flight to Chicago, then an email exchange!! See?? That's the power of a good reference! Since I now had a context to place him into (my friend at Fuqua is a WONDERFUL person who I totally love), I didn't flinch when he asked to trade seats with the passenger next to me so we could continue our "air date."

All fabulous MBA graduates automatically want to go to NYC, get on Wall Street, and make a name for themselves. My friend and my newly minted "air friend" were no exception. The summer after they graduated, they both got jobs in the Big Apple. As it turned out, I was going to be there for some work so I figured I'd fly in early and spend some time with my two friends. Being a big shot MBA grad, my friend had a great apartment in Battery Park, a block from the World Trade Centers, with a view looking out to Ms. Statue of Liberty (this was about 3 years before 9/11, after which the entire area was decimated. in November of 2002, on my first return to New York, I was awe-stricken by the view of the destruction. even in January of 2006, staying over the deep cavern all clean and grey, the heavy weight of silence stood with us and neither my father nor I could even attempt to keep our eyes dry). This meant he had a list of house guests booked well into the cold New York winter. So I decided to say with mr. "air friend" who had a small apartment across from the UN Headquarter.

My visit was welcomed by the air friend, who (bizarrely) chose not to tell me that his family would also be there to visit him that weekend! It was very sweet that he paid for his family to stay in a hotel while I got the spare bed in the spare room. He mentioned they were planning to see a Broadway show and wanted to see if I'd be interested in going as well. Turned out his family meant not only his brother and sister-in-law, but his mother, and a broadway show meant dinner before hand with those people!! So the one time I let a friend-affiliated stranger in, I subsequently find myself in the company of a mini-fleet of affiliated strangers. It got progressively worse when at the end of dinner that night, his mother told me that they insist that I come visit down in South Carolina next time he's going home. Apparently they thought I was a serious girlfriend of sorts. Strange the things people do and don't tell their parents.

The night was topped of when a absolute and complete stranger thought I could be his girlfriend of sorts of the night! Walking down 43rd street, with his brother and sister-in-law in front and him and his mother in back, someone actually approached me and asked how much I would charge to stay with him for the night!!!!! Man, did I learn my lesson about strangers that night. Affiliated or not, referenced or not, unless the credentials come well ahead of time and with complete endorsement, in the big sea of the world out there, people are just trying to find some sort of connection, any connection, however slight. It turned out that my friend was not a big fan of mr. mom-wants-me-to-visit. "Come on!! You can do SO much better!!" Imagine, if only there was instant text messaging back then, I might have been saved a night of akward wanna-be mother-in-law love and solicitation for a new friend one degree of separation from Mr. Benjamin Franklin.

The newly graduated Dukies were also having some big party and

For me, this is the beginning of a journey. A journey back to help better understand my past so I might be more accepting of the person I've become. I'm quite certain that my journey began before I was born. Prior to coming into this world, an architected roadmap had already been formulated and the pieces to come already put in place for me. I was to be a boy. Not just any boy, but one that would grow up to be polite, respectful, never talk back, excel in school, become a successful doctor or a lawyer, and have many children to carry on the surname of my family. Needless to say, from the moment I exited the womb, I began to fall short of all the expectations set forth for me. Over the course of the last thirty years, my parents have had to come to terms with my lack of a Y chromosome, my tendency to question their decisions and commands, my mediocre grades, not to mention my inability to register for the MCATs, and worst of all, my incompetence in finding a boy who wants to marry me and make little babies.

Today, by most accounts, I am considered successful. I've got a great job that pays me plenty, I have an advanced degree that allows me to put initials after my name on a business card, meaning I am one of the very blessed. However, I still constantly feel haunted by not only missing letters in my genetic makeup, but all my parents' other dreams that I feel short of. So this journey is an attempt for me to find the person I lost over the course of the last 30 years, trying to make sense of my mind, my dreams, and most importantly, myself, along the way.

The question I find myself most frequently struggling with is "what girl do you want to be?" I look around at the other women in my life and wonder how they've made their journeys to that place and whether they've also had to make ammends with the person they've become. What is it about being born a girl that forces you to ask so many questions of yourself? Or is it that at all? Had I been the treasured first born male of my generation, would my life had turned out much different? Instead of being kept in the shadows, told to be quiet, would I have been held proudly and heralded as the next great thinker, inventor, or leader of the world?

I'm a novice when it comes to blogging. Not sure exactly how this works, how big the "blog world" is, or whether anyone will ever hear my voice in the sea already full of mermaids. I'm just hoping this anonymous stream of conciousness verbalization of my mind will help me to somehow make better sense of all the various vestiages of memories that come across my thoughts. Here's hoping that this is the first step to many eloquent reflective proses to come.