On the soccer field today:
Teammate: Cathy, why don't you go play fullback.
Me: (panicked at the prospect) That's not a position where I have any competency.
Other teammate: You talk like Mr. Data!
I didn't mind the comparison, but it did conjure up unpleasant memories from summer camp, age 12-14, when no one would *listen* to a thing I had to say, but would always ask me in response to anything I said, "Why do you use such big words?"
Sadly, what I had in vocabulary I lacked in self-confidence and I could never manage a sufficient retort that could stave off the alienating humiliation their comments inflicted on me. It hurt my feelings that the other campers never really cared about what I was trying to communicate, only the words that I used. I was frustrated that their limitations had somehow become my problem, and that I was made to feel that using language precisely was something to be ashamed of.
As an adult, fortunately, I find that I'm taken more seriously, no matter how I phrase my sentences. Although I should perhaps point out here that I still had to go play fullback. Maybe they didn't really care about what I had to say after all...