Who Are You? Well, That all Depends

AS SOMEONE WHO has previously purchased Aristotle, you might like…” Thus began a recent email from Amazon.com. I’m thinking of printing it out and pinning it to my dress to wear while I watch The Simpsons, the combo of the two influences really kind of summing me up. Or does it? I’m not sure. Who am I, again? (Singalong now: “Who are you? Who, who, who who?”) Shall I ask Google, or ?

I think we can agree that life used to be simpler. You were a Democrat or a Republican, a city or country mouse, or, as I recently sagely opined in my best Aristotelian noggin, either a burger or a burrito. These days, as we used to say in Queens: Fuggedaboutit. Online, offline, pin number-ed or not, keyworded, passworded, multi-tasking at a whiplash pace, we are so many more people than our parents were, aren’t we?

I mean who are you? Have you looked recently? Since Google is the contemporary mirror through which we see all things, I thought I’d search for myself there, and can only now say conclusively that:

• I am not married to him.
• I did not publish this book.
• I am not on MySpace.

Adding to the confusion of who am not is the fact that I have two last names, so that when I go by my legal name, Marion Roach Smith, I am someone who serves as a trustee to my university, and is a mother. Under this name, I teach and am on other boards, including this one. Oh yeah, and spend my life with someone else, which is how I got this last name in the first place.

Early in my marriage, while my husband was the editor of our city’s newspaper, and in an attempt to be the ever dutiful help-mate to that man, I went into the local historical society to volunteer. Weeks later, I overheard someone proudly whisper to someone else, “Oh, well, we have the editor’s wife on our committee,” and I laughed like hell and wondered if they knew that I once spent my days—or more specifically, my nights—at Studio 54.

No, I thought I wouldn’t mention it. Nor the other clubs I frequented, nor lives I’ve lived. Nope, I had remade myself, you see. Which anyone can do, simply by starting a Facebook page. Oh, the sins that are washed away when you simply choose to tell what you choose to tell the world. A near occasion to absolution, that Facebook page. Look at all those pasts wiped clean. I love that.

That is, until an old acquaintance shows up with a friend request, and there is that chilling moment of what might be revealed.

A more private version of this fear can occur on email, as it did to me when just yesterday I received a message whose salutation read, “Dear Brenda,” the name by which I am known in my hometown of Douglaston, Queens. A former newspaper person, a redhead, the connection to Brenda Starr was obvious, but having been gone from The New York Times for more than 25 years, it amazes me that the name has stuck. Brenda I am, however, not to anyone where I now live.

Neither am I Red, which is what I was when living in Manhattan. I was Red to pretty much every construction worker, telephone line maintenance guy, cop and any other man on the street. Red, a nickname owned by all redheads. I like being Red.

And so it seems that some of the women we are are those we grow into, some we grow out of, and some we simply leave behind when we move. And you can get away from all of them, I suppose, but only if you are better at cleaning your closet than I am. I run into the old me(s) there among the shoes and the no-longer–worn miniskirts. Sigh.

Gee.  A woman could get frantic with this.

Or not.