Now that I think about it; I made those same mistakes when I was newly natural.
You're excited about your plans for your hair, so you wanna tell anybody.
I was 3 years a loose natural and was getting ready to have Sisterlocks installed and I was sitting with my 2 White coworkers and 1 one of the husbands to one of them and told them about my plans to lock my hair (I thought it was okay to talk hair with them because it was a salon)
The husband says "Oh, now we can call you rat girl"........I guess rat tails were a connection in his mind.
My coworkers knew better and smacked their lips and rolled their eyes at him, but still.....
It caught me off guard and the couple was old enough to be my parents, so I said nothing. That was 8 years back, couldn't have been today, promise.