How am I not myself?
144 words
I’ve been doing paperwork in Mexico City, signing thing after thing.
However, some doubt arose concerning my identity. The nine year old signature on my passport did not match the one I’d been putting everywhere, on everything. I’d mistakenly assumed we accepted the way a signature degrades over time, how it grows hastier, less sure of itself. The authorities did not accept this degradation, no, and requested an in-person appearance to re-sign all the things. Here you must chose a signature and commit.
A señor hovered over me as I tried to perform my name the way I once had—upright, tense, and contained. (Lately it had gone soupy.) He examined my new effort, compared it to my nearly-expired passport.
He pointed to the T. The horizontal line needed be longer, so I lengthened it, and was thus recognized by Mexico, to be myself.