My own name

Yesterday, at Dick Smiths’, while I waited for the cashier to print out the credit receipts for my mobile phone and before I paid, I saw a docket on the bench between us where, as far as I could tell – because it was upside down – my own name had been signed, although it wasn’t my signature.

I would like to have swivelled the docket around to see if it really was my own name there at the bottom of the docket. I was even tempted to ask the cashier whether he could read me what the docket said, or whether higher on the docket there was a name printed out. I would try to make a joke of it, I thought as I stood there. There must be many of me walking around.

It was hard enough living with my own name – a name as clamorous as Dick Smith itself, I was thinking – but I almost felt sorry for this other woman who, unbeknownst to her, was being trailed, not only by a dieting company, but myself as well.