"Identifies as..."

 You know this phrase is only used when something is not that thing, right? Identifying as something means there is some doubt.  You wouldn't say 

*"Shakespeare identified as English."    

***

I get weird memory flashbacks. I remembered today that as a kid, once (maybe 14?) I invented an alphabet as a code. Basically, I drew a particular shape that would be the a, the b, etc... and then wrote messages to myself using this code. I have no evidence of this happening, and don't remember why I did this. 

Another, more clear memory.  I read John Hollander's The Figure of Echo and wrote a paper about Robert Frost's poem "For once, then, something..." based on something in Hollander's book. I don't remember the argument of the paper, anymore, or much about Hollander, except that Frost's poem is about narcissism, and that some the Dante professor Freccero had mentioned either Hollander or the Frost poem. I still have the Frost memorized, though probably I rememorized it more recently than grad school.