Lovebirds

I know someone called Bob who once changed his name by deed poll
after a night out with his friends.  Or so he believed
anyway.  So he was told by his friends.  He woke up in the
morning with the name 'Deborah' tattooed on his shoulder and a note in
his pocket that said: 'My new name is Sinky - I had it changed by deed
poll'.

His friends explained the note to him.  It was fairly
self-explanatory, but they had to explain it to Bob.  Or
Sinky.  Let's stick with Bob.  They told him that he wrote
this note and put it in his pocket just in case he forgot about
changing his name.  He had a habit of forgetting things after a
night in the pub.

They had no idea who Deborah was, but a few days later he met a
woman at a bus stop and she said her name was Deborah.  Bob
thought it must be fate.  In that moment when he heard her name he
pictured the day when he'd marry Deborah.  He imagined the priest
saying, "Do you, Bob?"  And that's where he saw a slight
problem.  If his name is legally Sinky, then there's no point in
pretending that it's Bob because she'd find out the truth on their
wedding day, if not before.  So he decided to come clean from the
start, and he told her his name was Sinky.  She seemed to find it
a bit odd, but when he asked her out on a date, she said yes.

He took her to a restaurant, and conversation was a bit thin on the
ground at first.  After ten minutes, Bob was stuck for things to
say.  He talked about the lighting and the floor in the
restaurant, and the time his foot got caught in a snare and someone
pretending to be Phil Collins helped him out of it, but he wasn't
really Phil Collins.  And actually, now that he thinks about it,
he wasn't pretending to be Phil Collins either.  He just looked a
bit like him.

After a few minutes of silence, Bob remembered the food.  He
said, "The lobster is great?  And it is the bird of peace."

He had a feeling that that sounded wrong, and then he realised why -
it's the dove that's the bird of peace.  A lobster isn't even a
bird.  She looked very uncomfortable eating her lobster after
that, and at the end of the evening she didn't sound
overly-enthusiastic about meeting him again.

On the following day he decided to buy her a red tulip, but then he
thought, no, it's the rose you should buy in these situations. 
But then again, if he bought her a tulip it might make him look a bit
eccentric, and that might explain the remark about the lobster, and the
fact that his name is Sinky.  So he bought her the red tulip, and
she really liked it too.  She did think it was a bit
eccentric.  She saw him in a different light after this, and she
even invited him to a barbeque at her parents' house to meet the
parents.

He's always been a bit anxious about meeting parents - these things
don't always go to plan.  He met up with his friends in the pub
first and he had a few drinks before setting off for the parents'
house.  The effect of the few drinks took hold just after setting
off for the parents' house.  He couldn't remember the route to the
house but he remembered the address, so he asked someone for
directions.  A woman was able to tell him where to go, but he knew
he'd never remember the route.  She apparently knew it too - she
suggested that he write it down.  She had a pen but she didn't
have any paper, so he drew a map on the sleeve of his shirt.  He
followed the map and it led him right to Deborah's parents' front
door.

He rang the doorbell and then he suddenly realised that he had a map
on the sleeve of his shirt.  He thought about taking the shirt
off, or turning it inside out, but then he thought, no, just leave it
where it is.  It's eccentric.  A man called Sinky who sends
red tulips would have a map on the sleeve of his shirt.

So he did nothing about the map, and he got on great with the
parents.  That was his impression anyway.  The alcohol in his
brain left him with nothing more than vague impressions.  That's
probably why he spent so long kneeling in the grass next to the
fishpond, looking down at the fish and wondering if they're really
fish, like the lobster.

When he finally got up, Deborah said to him, "There's grass on your
knees."

"Hm?"  He didn't quite follow.

"On your knees!  Grass!"

"My?"

"Your KNEES."

She got out a pen and rolled up the legs of his trousers.  She
wrote the letter N on one knee and E on the other, and then said,
"KNEES."

Bob said, "What about the K?"

"The K is silent."

"Oh right?  What about the other E?"

"That's silent too."

"Oh?  Oh yeah."

He spent the rest of the evening going around to people with the
legs of his trousers rolled up, pointing at his knees and saying,
"Look, my knees.  KNEEEES."

When he woke on the following morning, he saw the letters N and E on
his knees, and then he saw the map on the sleeve of his shirt.  He
could remember Deborah writing the N and the E, and he wondered if she
drew the map too.  If she drew the map, then the N and the E would
surely mean 'North East'.

So he set off towards the North East and followed the map.  It
led him to a long road with nothing much at all on it, but he kept
walking in the hope that he'd find what he was looking for, and he
did.  He came across a pond, and he knew it looked familiar. 
Then he saw the ducks and that rang a bell in his mind.  He
wondered if the duck was the bird of peace.

As he stood there staring at the ducks, he put his hand in his
pocket and found a note inside.  He took it out and read it: 'I
asked Deborah to marry me and she said yes'.  His friends had put
it into his pocket just before he left to meet the parents on the
previous evening.

He stared at the note as he stood by the water, and a woman passed
by.  Or she didn't quite pass by - she stopped when she saw
Bob.  He noticed her standing near him and he looked up.  He
knew he'd seen her somewhere before, and when she said hello he
remembered it all.  Her name was Deborah too, and she lived in a
house near the pond.  He remembered spending an evening with her
and having her name tattooed on his shoulder.  The map that led to
this spot would suggest that it's this Deborah he's engaged to. 
If you think about it (this is what he thought about it at the time),
the map and the note are more likely to mean that he's engaged to this
Deborah, rather than that the other Deborah is making a comment about
ducks being the bird of peace.  He had a feeling that ducks aren't
even birds.

She noticed that he looked confused so she asked him if something
was wrong.  He said, "What's my name?"

She looked at something on her arm and said, "Bob."

He was delighted to hear that.  He preferred being Bob. 
He was sick of people calling him Sinky, and he didn't want to keep up
the pretence of being eccentric.  He said to her, "I know this
might sound odd, but I have a feeling that I might have asked you to
marry me."

"Oh?  And what did I say?"

He looked at the note.  "You said 'yes', apparently."

She looked at the name on her arm again and said, "Yeah?  It's
possible."

"I woke up this morning and found this map and?"

"You only woke up this morning?  I woke up days ago.  You
must have drunk enough to knock out a horse."

"I must have.  My mind is very sketchy when it comes to the
details."

But he was happy with the idea, and she seemed reasonably happy
herself.  He couldn't recall how things ended with the other
Deborah, but he assumed that they had split up in some way.  He
tried to avoid her, and she never tried to contact him.  He did
once pass her parents on the street, but they ignored him completely,
so he assumed that she had caused a bit of a scene when they split
up.