What's yer "game face?"

[LitTrog]

One of our HR ladies at work attended our department meeting the other day, armed with a camera, a silly idea, and far too much idle time. Her mission: to capture each of us in a "candid" moment of serious concentration to publish in our company's internal newsletter. Our president is currently overseas and she wanted him to see just how diligent we are, even in his absence. In addition to the group shot, she wanted canned individual images to fully illustrate that point. Okay, fine. We took turns sitting for her--bang, bang, bang--she's knocking out pictures of everyone until she gets to me. Eight attempts at making me look like a model drone, and this is the one she finally deemed "not terrible."



Seems I either looked too bored, too amused, or too willing to jam a finger in my oversized nostril.

Any of you who are familiar with my postings on this forum know that I have a...tendency to be slightly odd. Some may find me funny, some may be completely put off by the stuff I write (I forgive the first group and sympathize with the second). However, that's who I am--whether I'm online or offline. I'll provide an email address to anyone who wishes to express their sympathy to my lovely wife.

Even though I have fun at my job, it is fairly serious bidness. Obviously, it's necessary to feed my family, pay my mortgage, etc.--but beyond that, 90% of the work we do falls under the aegis of the DoD...my employer needs me to take things seriously. I narrowly survived a couple incidents early on in my career which highlighted the need to drastically modify my MO. It occurred to me while driving to work yesterday morning that I spend the entire 45 minute commute systematically dampening the parts of my personality which might be jarring to my coworkers--putting on my "game face."

What's your game face? Could be, like me, a professional one (retail--smiling at rude knuckleheads; rodeo clown; historical reenactors/recreators; athletes) or personal, like going to visit a loved one in prison, or spending time with horrid in-laws. To bring it round to kilting, do you adopt a different attitude when you're all tartaned up? I know when I first started wearing mine to places unaccustomed to a kilt, I felt myself trying to exude an air of bristling hostility just to forestall some jackball from making an asinine comment. 'Course, considering my small stature and long eyelashes, I was probably no more intimidating than a petulant toddler.

What's your story? What's your face? Words are good; pictures are better!