Nomenclature

The ‘sales representative’ is bright and cheerful. She asks my surname and when I tell her exclaims ‘The same as my boyfriend’s snake!’. Pardon? Yes, apparently her boyfriend keeps a 5’7”, black and red corn snake in a cage at the end of his bed that she’s rather afraid of, and its name is my surname.

Then she asks me my Christian name, which I tell her, adding ‘Let me guess, it’s the same as your boyfriend’s tarantula?’

‘No!’ she says emphatically, ‘If it was, he wouldn’t be my boyfriend. But it’s the same as mine!’.

‘So let me clarify this,’ I say wryly, ‘I share a Christian name with you, and a surname with your boyfriend’s snake? No one’s ever said that to me before.’