How I Didn’t Exist but Then Became One

I have been practicing using the first person singular pronoun. In conversation. As is appropriate for single people to use.

‘I’ is not my favourite. Frankly I prefer ‘We’. I (note the use of the first person singular pronoun) hope that I won’t be an I for very long and will become a We but in the interim I (note the use of the first person singular pronoun) am practicing.

This is what happened:

I met a person who didn’t know me.

This, for a start, is dangerous ground. People who know me tend to know me and take me with several bushels of salt, a teaspoon of pepper and assorted ground condiments. They know at what point to spit me out.

I met a person who didn’t know me. And tried to tell them about myself. It turned out that I didn’t exist. I was the first person plural - We. I was not an independent entity.

It’s all very well and good not being an independent entity when one actually is We. It is totally different if I’m not We. Which I’m not.

I am considering simply bluffing and claiming to be the Queen. She’s a little older than me and has a very different attitude to handbags but I, sorry We, think we can pull it off.

We are actually quite well qualified to be the Queen as we are one of the last people left on earth to regularly use the gender neutral impersonal pronoun ‘One’. This apparently is a sign of poshness. So at least I can be sure that David Beckham fancies me.

Life has suddenly become so much simpler. No longer do we need to wrestle with the big question of ‘Who am I?’ and instead ask ‘Who is one?’ And since we are now the Queen we have a fixed and well-documented life which any person who doesn’t know us might discover on the internet, in a plethora of magazines, or by asking a handy Beefeater.

One has been practicing using the gender neutral impersonal pronoun. One thinks therefore one is. One exists.

One is, at last, fucking sorted.