Where it all started...

Everyone has their claim to fame. Sometimes its something simple like your hometown newspaper writing an article about your game winning shot. Sometimes its a bit more exotic like winning a bicycle on The Price is Right. Sometimes it is just something freaking funny that you have drunkenly done (ie branding your leg with your favorite rugby team's emblem). And sometimes its something that happens while you're painting your college hallways. Here is my story. It isn't life defining exactly, and it encompasses much more than this particular excerpt, but this is where it all started.

About eight years ago I was working as a student painter in college. It was an average summer day in Minnesota - you know, ninety percent humidity and mosquitos the size of a mallard duck. Luckily for me I was and indoor painter with a box fan. I painted a little of everything; hallways, classrooms, offices. I learned that everyone who walks by a painter feels compelled to talk to them. People always have to say something. I heard a lot of "That is covering up that graffiti so well!" and "Oh my goodness that is such a beautiful color!" All the while in my head I'm thinking about how the color is F-5 J-5 and we use it on every wall in the school. But yes, it is a lovely smokers teeth yellow.

This day was just like any other day of the summer. I was painting a hallway in the Family and Consumer Sciences building, jamming out to R. Kelly most likely, and covering the walls with our beautiful F-5 J-5. I looked up after hearing noise because the hallways were almost always deserted. A woman and her young daughter were walking down the hallway towards the exit near where I was painting. The stopped when they got to me, and the woman exclaimed, "Oh look at that color! And it's covering so nicely." She then smiled at me, poked her daughter and said "You see honey?...he's (double take)...she's (double take number two)...Everybody's painting!!!" Quickly she grabbed her daughter by the arm and hustled her out the nearest exit. I looked around to see if, in fact, Everybody was painting. Hmmm, no. Just me in a hallway. I know my English well enough to know that Everybody most definitely means there is more than one person involved. I guess "Everybody" was better than "it"?

I've told this story countless times over the past eight years. Mainly to my rugby friends who laugh really hard and follow that up quickly with another mistaken gender identity story. But recently when I moved to Denver and joined the rugby team I was greeted with "YOU are the Everybody's Painting girl?! We love that story!" Apparently the story had been shared by a few people other than myself and that is when I realized for sure that this could be pretty funny. So here I am now, planning on writing a blog about the gender mishaps I have had over the years, and lets be completely honest, the ones that will continue to happen in the future. Thanks for reading, and I hope that you can enjoy a good laugh at the expense of my handsome lady self.