My friend Dr. Crane says you don’t know the real me. Not that I tell you anything untrue, he says, because I don’t tell you everything — for instance that I get mad and stomp. In fact, he says that’s why my feet hurt so much — all that stomping wears out my orthotics. Dr. Crane bases this on one teeny little episode back when I was still teaching at UNCC.

I was trying to photocopy pages for a student handout while he and a student stood right on top of the copy machine chatting. They had me wedged into the corner and they were talking so loudly I couldn’t concentrate. When things got mixed up in my handouts, I gathered up the whole mess and walked over to the wastebasket and dumped everything in.

OK, so it was a whole ream of paper and maybe I did walk just a bit heavy the first few steps, but that doesn’t necessarily mean stomping is a regular thing with me.

And it’s pure coincidence that when a reporter left the Post some time ago she sent word back about how she missed Sara stomping around the newsroom complaining about stories.

I think women who don’t wear high heels appear to be stomping, even when they are not.

Dr. Crane is wrong. You know plenty enough about how I walk.

What you don’t know, if you haven’t spent much time talking to me, is that I am loud and have a penetrating voice.

It’s a family trait. My Grandmother Dietrick had it. My father had it. So did my Aunt Margaret. I couldn’t escape. Neither could my sister or my kid. Some of my earliest memories are of Sunday dinner at Grandma Dietrick’s house, with everybody talking at once in those piercing voices.

For years I thought the others had the Voice, not me. Then I heard myself on an answering machine right after I heard my sister and, I swear, if we hadn’t identified ourselves, I don’t think I could tell who was who. It sort of explains why my ears always seemed to ring inside my head after I spent time with her.

I realized my older kid inherited the Voice the same way. She’d left me a message in voice mail which I heard right after listening to my own “sorry I can’t take your call” spiel. Poor kid.

The trouble is, no matter how hard you try, if you have a Dietrick Voice, you can’t subdue it. A woman I work with at the Post once said, “Sara, you think you’re lowering your voice and speaking softly, but you’re not.” My only option is to avoid saying anything I am not willing for the whole room to hear.

This is a nuisance sometimes, but in earlier years the Voice served me well. I learned how to make a woo-woo-woo sound like ambulances and emergency vehicles. It was great for calling the kids when they got separated from me in the mall, and at least once I used it when I couldn’t find Himself at an airport. It embarrassed them all so much I sometimes did it downtown just to give ’em grief.

It’s become a family joke. We all woo-woo each other in greeting across the yard and my grandchildren call Otis’ howl “a dog’s version of woo-woo-woo.”

So now you know me. Woo-woo-woo. And, in the spirit of openness, I suppose I should tell you that I am getting new orthotics next week. Wore out the old ones.