It’s weird that it should happen for the first time so late in life, but next week I’m going on holiday with someone else called Zoe. I wasn’t particularly worried about it, since it’s generally easy enough to distinguish who is meant by the context, even when two people are the same age and do exactly the same things, as you will know if your name is Ben.
In this case, the other Zoe is a teenager, so it will immediately be obvious who’s who, as our activities will scarcely overlap. Any Zoe who has made a serious error – lost someone else’s passport, backed into a tree – will be me and any Zoe who has forgotten her swimming costume or wants to go paddleboarding will be her.
“You haven’t thought this through,” said my friend J. “You’re obviously going to be Big Zoe. You should start getting used to it now. By day four, you’ll probably just be Big ’Un.”
I did not like this idea. I also think the other Zoe is taller than me, especially since my height has cascaded, via the march of time and some lying when I was young, from 5ft 10in (178cm) to 5ft 8in. Young people are much, much taller than this now. “Would you rather be Old Zoe?” asked J.
There is no right answer to this, because if I insisted upon being the default, so we were Zoe and Young Zoe, that would still make me old. The director of the Vagina Museum in London has the whole same name as me; when I need to disambiguate from her, I go with “non-vagina Zoe Williams”, but this would take a bit of unpacking. I wouldn’t mind Wise Zoe, but I don’t think I’d get away with it (see passports, trees).
“Could I be Woke Zoe?” I suggested. J mocked me for ages, because I don’t even know the meaning of the word compared with a woke teen, which puts me – surprisingly – in the same bracket as the rest of society.
I may just go without a name for the week. It’s surprising how much you can do without on holiday. I almost never remember a swimming costume.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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