It’s been quite an eye-opener, witnessing the different reactions people have had to my personal ramblings on this page.

A friend I haven’t seen for a few months ran into me the other day and said she felt like she’d been keeping up with my life through my editorials. Reading them was kind of like reading about celebrities, she said – you feel like you know them, even though you’ve never met.

People who do know me would agree that I’m not in this for the fame. I kick and scream every time I have to have a new picture taken. But I do enjoy writing, and it’s both a challenge and a reward to write something that entertains people.

I must have talked to 20 people who told me they enjoyed my Jan. 10 editorial about going karaoke-ing in thrift store disguises. One friend said she was amazed and relieved to learn she wasn’t the only one with a “thing” about wearing used clothing. (It’s the same “thing” some people have about spiders or raw oysters.) But not everyone interpreted my attempts at humor the same way.

When my friends and I dressed up to be silly, we were making fun of ourselves. My sister’s $200 hairstyle (which even she considered outrageous, by the way) lost all its mojo when other bar patrons took her for an ascetic introvert. My own temporarily obnoxious attitude was the source of great amusement to my cohorts – they know as well as I do that I often need to loosen up.

Some readers have commented that I should be ashamed of laughing at the misfortune of others – namely, the people who shop at thrift stores as an economic necessity. I wonder if their sensibilities would have been as offended if we had paid full retail price at Nordstrom’s for our garb? Or would we then be perceived as making fun of Nordstrom’s shoppers? And would that have been as heinous a crime?

Or was it the fact that one of our number called her look “trailer trash?” “I hope, Ms. Strecker,” wrote a respondent with indignation, “that you will never have to live in a single-wide trailer that’s outlived its life of usefulness …” Actually, I haven’t yet written about the period in my life when I lived in a single-wide trailer. When I do, maybe that will change some perceptions.

The term “tacky secretary” also caused some consternation. Remember Carol Burnett’s comic character of Mrs. Wiggins, the inept secretary to Tim Conway’s beleaguered Mr. Tudball? If you were outraged that her caricature was insensitive to real-life secretaries, then I guess you have a right to be outraged at my cousin’s interpretation. But I bet you laughed at Carol Burnett.

“Rich girl” was one angry writer’s term for me, and not in an admiring way. Wrote another, “Perhaps you and your friends could learn something by donating your time and $200 haircut monies to the local food banks and other charities.” Would it change these readers’ minds, do you think, if they knew that my contributions to local nonprofits last year totaled six times more than what I spent on clothing for myself? (And that’s just dollars, not hours.) Probably not. First impressions are the strongest, after all. (By the way, if you’re looking for a deal on women’s dress pants, Ross has a lovely selection on clearance right now for $3.49.)

“Kathleen, it’s my hope that one day you will be able to see beyond the mere clothes that people wear and see the real person inside,” commented another reader. “Just because one chooses to wear certain clothing should not influence how they are seen or treated in society.”

That was my point exactly.