Am I Betty's Mom?

“Rae is a wife and mother and moved to the area three years ago. She has moved around a lot and recently came here from Philadelphia.”

This was how I was recently introduced after participating in one of those awful “get to know you” group exercises where you chat with another person for a couple of minutes and then introduce each other to the rest of the group. I was in a room of activists, doctors, advocates, professors and otherwise impressive females and I was already p.o.’d that I couldn’t introduce myself because I am a control freak and have carefully honed my “elevator speech” over the years to be able to explain who I am in 30 seconds. But when my partner skipped over my whole spiel and presented me as a wife and mother from f-ing Philadelphia I went from annoyed to shocked. "Is that who I am?” I thought. And I was kind of embarrassed! And then I felt awful for feeling embarrassed. And then, true to my Graham nature, I have stewed over this stupid introduction for months. Yes months. What. But I am declaring today that I’m very close to letting it go after just saying the following: if I am ever faced with a similar exercise in the future I will excuse myself to the bathroom for fifteen minutes and introduce my own damn self when I return to the group. I will say I'm a wife and mother as well as blah blah blah and I will not mention a place that I lived for less than a year as if it describes something about me! I'm now letting this go. Introduction, get thee behind me!!!