musings

[llywela]

Once upon a time when I was a teenager, I had a piano teacher who was a bit of a hippy, and by 'bit of a hippy' I mean really very. She was called Saffron, although that wasn't her real name, and she had two daughters called Jane and Rachel.

One day, Saffron stopped being our piano teacher because she'd decided to move her family up to the outer Hebrides to catch lobsters for a living. You know, as you do. As part of this fresh start, she told Jane and Rachel that they could choose new names and they decided to re-name themselves Emily and Rose. And off they all went.

A few years later, I bumped into Saffron in town and stopped for a chat. She'd returned to Cardiff to open a shop, she told me, after realising that you can't actually make a living catching lobsters in the Hebrides.

I wanted to ask after her daughters, but wasn't sure which names to use. Had they really stuck with those new names they'd chosen for themselves? Or had they reverted to the names they'd used all their lives? I compromised on a euphemism and asked after 'the girls'.

"Oh, they're fine," said Saffron. "The older one is doing ABC and the younger one is doing XYZ..."

Older one. Younger one. Those were the names she used.

So I wondered. Did she think I couldn't remember their names? Was she not sure what names they'd been using when I knew them? Had they changed their names so many times since that she could no longer remember herself what they were called? Had they changed their names so many times that they no longer had names at all?

I didn't like to ask!

Comments

[catsdownunder.livejournal.com]

Talk about an identity crisis.

[femsc.livejournal.com]

How very odd!