No, I’ve not chosen Bubbles for my stripper name.  (It does sound like a stripper name, no?)  It’s actually a nickname given to me by a patient of mine at work a few years ago.  I’d taken care of this woman several times over a few month time period, so got to know her pretty well.  And apparently, she got to  know me,too.  A few weeks after I started caring for her, she began calling me Bubbles.  After a few days of this, she would ask staff on the previous shift if Bubbles was going to be working that night and they would know who she was asking about.  She said she called me that ’cause I’m just so darn bubbly.  Which is funny, because that’s not how I see myself.  And that was the point of this post.  We don’t always see ourselves as others see us.  Sometimes there’s only a slight discrepancy, and sometimes the discrepancy is huge.  In my case, I can see why people see me that way, I just don’t see it myself as much as they do, so I guess the discrepancy is fairly small.  Apparently this patient of mine isn’t the only one who sees me as bubbly, because I had another thing happen years ago that showed me this is how people see me.  I was a nanny for a family far away from my home and family and friends.  I missed my family and friends terribly and was lonely and homesick.  The mother of the children I was caring for had the best of intentions when she placed a personal ad for me.  In it, she described me as effervescent.  I remember asking her what that word meant.  She told me she thought it was ironic that I didn’t know the definition, since my personality virtually defines the word.  (Yes, I do know now what the word means.)  I suppose there are much worse things than bubbly that others could see me as.  So I’m not complaining.