Idly browsing the List's I Saw You column, I found a message that purported to be from me. It went like this:
"I SAW YOU, evil man in car. You: registration [I forget the number] Me: Diarmid Partick."
I couldn't believe it. I was being impersonated! The pseudonym was pathetic; it was clearly designed to give the impression that I was feebly trying to hide my identity -- anyone would guess that "Diarmid Partick" was me. Why would this impostor try to suggest that I thought that someone I didn't know was an evil man?
Later, as I walked down Brougham Street, a 1970s-era car pulled up beside me and a man got out, shouting and swearing at me. It was him, the alleged evil man from the I Saw You column! Evidently, he'd read the message and seen through the transparent pseudonym. I knew he wouldn't believe that I had been framed, so I ran off, which seemed to work.
Notes for Freudian Analysis
I hardly ever read the List, but whenever I do, I tend to glance through the I Saw You column. For those who don't know what it is, it's a part of the classified ads where people are supposed to leave messages like "I SAW YOU on Princes Street. You: glamorous woman. Me: timid intellectual indie kid walking into lamppost. Call me."
Yesterday, on the way to a committee meeting in Ayr, the sight of some particularly unskilful graffiti on a train station caused me to tell the people who were with me about the time in primary 7 when someone scrawled my name on the classroom wall in an unsporting attempt to incriminate me. It was obvious to the teacher, however, that I wouldn't have been dim enough to write my own name on the wall. And that, if I had been, I would probably have spelled it correctly.
Why did I think that Diarmid Partick was an obvious pseudonym? A mystery.
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