So I've been a poll worker for about 12 years now, and we have local elections coming up Saturday which I am working. And I decided that I didn't want to wear a band shirt this time, as over the last few years, I kind of gave up on fitting in and gave my normal clothes to charity and have collected nothing but band shirts to wear. And clothes are always hard to find at my size, and the 3X's in stores fit a bit smaller than the 3X band shirts. So I was looking at the shirts and I really liked the red MMA shirt, which those only went up to XL. And I'm really picky with clothes, I always have been. I have these weird hang-ups about what I wear such as not endorsing something I don't agree with, or wearing something too commercial/boring/personality-less which is harder to explain. And there's a whole wall plus several shelves of shirts with some stupid slogan or saying on it, and I feel like those are for the dumb people so I couldn't find anything that I didn't feel would label me as lame (if even in my own mind).
So I picked out a few things and decided to try them on, because I don't like anything too form-fitting. There's usually only 1 employee back at the dressing rooms, but this time there were 5 of them, all women, chatting with each other and just hanging out. Not one of them thought twice about me and they pointed to the men's side and said I could go ahead on in, so of course I did.
But the shirts I tried on were a bit too tight and felt weird, but I ended up finding a 3X tshirt on a small cardboard stand for $6 that made me laugh and I thought, "Oh yeah, that's me!" It says "Get lost" and has a little graphic of mountains & trees. So it combines my love of the outdoors with my general attitude in regards to most people.
I even passed with the cashier, too, and the woman (who knows me) who works the front desk of the vets I take my cats to came up behind me in line, said hi and all and didn't correct the girl for calling me sir. And the appointment I had at the free clinic went awesome as well. I was very shocked that I didn't have to explain or say anything about myself. It was an intake appointment just to get my information down and without saying a word he says, "So technically your name is S________, right?"
Me: "Yeah."
Him: "And you prefer to be called...?"
Me: (shocked) "Seth."
Very awesome!
