If You Met Me

“Hi. I should introduce myself. We’re actually really good friends,” she says as we pass each other on the sidewalk, each of us walking our dogs AGAIN. “You just haven’t met me yet. But I read your stuff every day. We have coffee together.”

I love when this happens. When the cyber world around me comes closer. When I meet the people behind my computer screen.

I’ve made lots of new friends this week, in the wake of my post to teachers. Your emails are pouring in, and my heart has swelled with the greetings, the shared heartbeats, and the world getting smaller and bigger at the same time.

Or this happened too.

“Tricia?  Tricia.  Hi.  We thought it was you over there.  We wanted to say hi, but then we thought maybe that wouldn’t be a bloggable encounter.  So we thought about spilling our water on you, or, you know, something.”

Thank you for saying hello.  Introducing yourself.  You’re the other half of this equation, you know.

I’ve had more than one conversation about this question:

The girl who writes… does she match the girl you are?

Well, here’s the long or short answer, depending on how much you really wanted to know.

Does the writer match who I am?  If you met me, would you recognize the girl over the coffee cup?  Yes.

Do I write everything I think and have you discovered all there is to know by reading my daily musings?  No.

If you met me, you would find that the words I write match the words I speak.  You’d find that I do all the things I tell you I do… talk with my hands, doodle in my margins, drink coffee obsessively.  You’d find that I write how I talk.  You’d find that the personality matches the persona.

If you met me, you might get bored.  I don’t spill with stories, metaphors, wit and wisdom all hours of the day, or even any hour of the day, given the day.  I don’t talk very much.  I’m kind of quiet.  I don’t get lonely very often, and I share space well with people who are okay with quiet space, gray noise, dead airtime.

Those who love me well know that there’s almost always something brewing in my mind, I don’t necessarily give it away, and there’s usually more where that came from.

If you met me, I think you would say, “She’s just like I thought she would be.”

And I think you would say, “There’s so much more to her than I thought.”

If you and I cross paths, please say hello.  And no need to go pouring your water in my lap.

Simply meeting you is bloggable.

I promise.