Don't Judge A Blond By Her Cover

Right now I am sitting in a train on the way to visit one of my best friends, and future college roommate, in Virginia. Across from me is this guy who has taken 2 smoke breaks since I got on the train half an hour ago, who is intensely listening to his music, is reading a book titled "Hell", drinking a poorly disguised beer out of a can in a paper bag and is currently rubbing some kind of ointment all over the tattoo on his arm. Yeah. This is real life. Thank you Baltimore for keeping it classy as always.

However, despite all of these obvious signs, I am trying my best not to label this guy. I am also refusing to make eye contact (mostly because my mother is convinced that any minute I will probably be sold into white slavery). But because in addition to all of the things mentioned above, I have also noticed him helping a woman with her baggage at the last stop he took his smoke break, politely waving to the guy who just walked by and smiling kindly at these adorable children that are playing in the seats across from us. When he stretched his feet out, he made sure that he wasn't accidentally kicking me. Also- I glimpsed his iPod and he is actually rocking out to Taylor Swift right now. I am not making this stuff up, people. Seriously.

But mostly I am trying not to judge him because the same could be said of me. Take one look at me right now, sitting here with my bleached blond hair and yoga pants, iPhone in  hand and Vera Bradley bag beside me and I look like the picture of an over-privileged, vapid sorority girl. Which I am… sort-of. Well I hope I am not vapid (and I think that using that word correctly in context would help prove the opposite.) My point really, is that there is so much more to me than first appearances, and that even the people that know me the BEST don't know everything about me.

From first glance at me, you might not think my vocabulary is expansive, that my Vera Bradley bag is just a gift from a job that I am working to pay for college expenses, that my bleached blond hair came from a five dollar bottle I paid for with coupons in Walgreens. And I certainly don't think for a second that the guy across from me would expect me to pull the Lord of the Rings trilogy from my bag once I finish this blog entry and devour it voraciously. Which I will. Or that these yoga pants are just sucking in the tummy that's had one too many bags of Cheetos. Or that I chose to attend the college whose logo is emblazoned across my laptop because of it's strong Christian worldview and conservative values. Or that the music coming out of my headphones is from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

This past year at college I remember a guy telling me that the first time he met me he assumed I was a complete idiot and that we really wouldn't get along at all. Of course, he told me that promptly after I had used a vocabulary word of which he did not know the meaning. I was so surprised that me, the top-of-her-class, classically educated Megan Rossi, could ever be perceived as anything short of brilliant. But the thing is, that this guy is hardly the first or last to see me this way. 

That's because as human beings, we are so quick to write people off when they don't look like us, or make assumptions based on appearance. (And maybe that's okay… after all, we do choose how we want to present ourselves to the world.) But I also think that you ought to look more deeply at the people around you, and really notice them before you judge them. Because most of the time, people's appearances and their actions have so much more to them then you might think.

I know… this was totally a cliché post, and hardly full of the sarcastic wit that you've come to expect of me. But I was just feeling preachy, and this blog seemed like the perfect place to trick people into reading… er, I mean share my views with people.