Saturday 25 January 2014

The Birth of Troy Spiter

The other day I went to Starbucks to buy a coffee. As I ordered my medium cappuccino I reached into my pocket discovering, to my horror, that I had left my wallet in the school. Luckily one of my students was also in the cafe and offered to pay for me... a little embarrassing, but hey I am an English Teacher so I'm always happy to receive hand-outs.

The girl behind the counter asked for my name to which I responded 'Roy' - I said this as this is my name. I suddenly caught sight of what she had written and asked her to confirm. She showed me 'Troy' to which I chuckled. I love living in London, cause the amount of people from other countries who don't understand me always make me feel like I'm on a permanent holiday. Only the other day I had to try and communicate in Italian to ask whether the Burritos come in different sizes. I do not speak Italian, but a blend of Spanish, Portuguese and a few words I did know accompanied by a few mines seemed to do the trick.

So here I was confronted with the wrong name on the coffee cup and the girl behind the counter staring at me as to how to continue.  I decided to break the tension with a light comment:

"Troy, well that's ok, I mean it's an ancient civilization so that's cool, like Sparta"

In a moment of confusion the girl began to scribble on my cup again, but instead of Sparta she wrote Spiter... so when my name was called I had to respond to Troy Spiter, a man with a superhero porn star name.

The only thing that worries me is Spiter is quite close to Spit or Spitter, which I hope was not a call to arms for her colleagues to give me 'an extra shot' in the coffee of the man creating all the fuss about his name. Anyway, it tasted good, so who gives a fuck... plus now I have a new character to write a short story about.

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