The other night I was wandering down Welch Avenue with my roommate. We saw a guy from my high school whom I’d only seen about three or four times since graduation. He was talking to some friends and lighting a cigarette.

“Hey,” I said, slowing down as I walked by.

“Hey,” he said. “Do you want a smoke?”

“You know I don’t smoke,” I chided him.

(During a group interview our senior year, I told a D.A.R.E. officer that I had once taken a puff and hated it. Despite my quiet assurance that I didn’t actually smoke, the boys in my class teased me relentlessly about it from then on. In my senior memory book, several of them made references to my alleged habit. Example: “Lay off the smokes, Juli.”)

“Well, you’ve changed.”

“Hmm,” I thought, “I wonder what exactly he means by that.” Maybe he was talking about my hair, which is currently short and blue, but in high school was brown and puffy like some experiment in static electricity. I couldn’t really ask him to elaborate because ours wasn’t a real conversation but one of those brief, floating ones people sometimes have when they’re both engaged in other activities.

“You’ve changed.” Hmm.

I have a lecture class with another guy from my high school class. I’ve talked to him a few times, but mostly I just watch him in class. (I know my behavior may sound strange, but I assure you, it doesn’t count as stalking him since I’ve known him 3/4 of our lives.) I wonder who that person is he’s talking to. His best friend? Roommate? What’s he asking? The meaning of life? To borrow a pencil?

In school he was allergic to chalk and couldn’t go to the blackboard to work problems. (Not fair! I always thought.) In third grade, he won some essay contest about the Constitution and got a plaque. (I must admit, I was a little jealous.) He and all my classmates in our tiny school used to seem so familiar to me. Now I wonder if I still know him. I wonder if I ever knew him.

I had a strange experience the other day. While staring at myself in a bathroom mirror, I realized that I didn’t really look familiar to myself. The more I looked and thought about it, the less I recognized my own face.

(This had nothing to do with alcohol or any other artificially induced stupor, so put your suspicions to rest. If anything, it probably had more to do with the fact that it was five in the morning, I’d had an inadequate amount of sleep in the past four days, I was dehydrated, sunburned and shivering with cold.)

Obviously, the reflection was my own, and I was willing to go along with that. But that wasn’t the way I thought I looked. The picture of myself was way different.

But then I began to think. Maybe the way I used to see myself wasn’t the way I was anymore. Maybe I’d changed since coming up here to Ames. Some people seemed to think so. Last fall, a friend of mine (who’s still in my school back home) asked if I’d gotten a tattoo. I hadn’t, but for some reason someone had apparently shared this rumor with her.

I found this bit of information particularly amusing, considering the way a tattoo would clash violently with the perception a lot of people had of me in high school. They thought things of me that I didn’t think of myself.

Recently I had a 10-minute argument with my friend Josh concerning my home phone number. I told him that I had forgotten it last week. (I eventually remembered it without having to look in my address book, but it took a while.) I know this sounds like a dumb thing to do, but in my own defense, I must point out that my parents have a 1-800 number so I haven’t actually used the real number in a long time.

Innocent as he swore they were, I took offense at the comments Josh made about my forgetfulness. He insisted that it was indicative of my nature. One of my endearing qualities, he said. I had to disagree. That just wasn’t the way I was accustomed to thinking of myself.

Here at college, my friends (like Josh) often make observations about me that seem completely foreign and off target to my ears. I’m random. Impulsive. Outgoing. I’m bad at math. I hurt myself all the time. Etc.

Do they even know me? Sometimes when we’re hanging out, I’ll look around at my group of friends and be amazed. Who are these people? Do I really spend most of my time with them? Sometimes they seem like strangers.

The other day, I accused my roommate of frequently losing her possessions (for which I have some convincing evidence). She was not pleased with my insinuation that she is careless and irresponsible, and we quibbled over this for awhile until we finally agreed to disagree.

My roommate happened to be present during my argument with Josh. She pointed out that the presumptuous manner I was accusing Josh of using was the same way I’d treated her. Then I understood why she’d been so upset about what I’d said to her.

We all have images of ourselves in our minds. I think what we want most is for someone to understand us the way we see ourselves. When people see other things in us, things we don’t see in ourselves, we’re hurt. We feel cheated somehow.

So if this story had to have a moral, I guess it would be this: Don’t presume, about yourself or about anyone else.

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Juli Hisel is a sophomore in English from Richland.