Perception is a funny thing.

We have someone new at work. She is into her fourth week, and has settled right in.

I wonder what she really thinks about me. I was a little frustrated about something today, and dropped the f bomb more times than Hugh Grant did at the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral. She said that she had never heard me swear, and that I don't look like the kind of person who swears, and she didn't think that I ever swore. I was surprised, because there are times that I can turn the air around me blue. I remember experimenting with swearing in (late) primary school. Mainly, I think, to see if I could shock my friends, and to see what sort of reaction I could get. I've just been IMíng with a friend - he says I look too gentle to swear.

Later on, we were talking about music, and she mentioned the song O.P.P by Naughty by Nature and I started singing it. She looked at me in surprise, and then said that I wasn't the sort of person that she would expect to know her music.

I don't know whether to feel insulted, because I'm not "cool" enough to like her music or swear, or to just keep messing with her head by letting her see the real me which is obviously a bit hard to deal with. Right now I just want to go and carry out teenage acts of rebellion.

Of course, why I care about what she thinks of me is a whole different kettle of fish.